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UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 
Donated  in  memory  of 

Mr.   Walter  Regenhardt 
by 

Mrs.  Walter  Regenhardt 


ST.  GILES'S  FROM  THE  LAWNMARKKT.— Frontispiece. 

Koyal  Edinburgh, 


Jv  CONTENTS. 

PART  III. 

THE  TIME  OF  THE  PROPHETS 

CHAPTER  I 
UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT 248 

CHAPTER  n 
UNDER  QUEEN  MARY 299 

CHAPTER  III 
THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END 338 

CHAPTER  IV 
THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION 360 

PART  IV 
THE  MODERN  CITY 

CHAPTER  I 
A  BURGHER  POET 420 

CHAPTER  II 
THE  GUEST  OF  EDINBURGH 453 

CHAPTER  III 
THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND 469 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 

St.  Giles's  from  the  Lawnmarket Frontispiece. 

Queen  Margaret's  Chapel,  Edinburgh  Castle 1 

Pillar  in  Nave,  Dunfermline  Abbey 6 

Dunf ermline  Abbey 8 

West  Tower,  Dunfermline  Abbey 10 

Queen  Margaret's  Cave 11 

The  Nave,  Dunfermline  Abbey — looking  West 13 

West  Doorway,  Dunfermline  Abbey 18 

Interior  of  Queen  Margaret's  Chapel,  Edinburgh  Castle 21 

The  Bass  Rock 48 

Holyrood 71 

Edinburgh  Castle  from  the  South-west 77 

Inner  Barrier,  Edinburgh  Castle 83 

Edinburgh  Castle  from  the  Vennel 94 

St.  Anthony's  Chapel  and  St.  Margaret's  Loch 110 

Mons  Meg 117 

The  Canongate  Tolbooth 122 

Anns  of  James  IV  of  Scotland 150 

Old  House  in  Lawnmarket 156 

St.  Anthony's  Chapel 161 

Old  Houses  at  Head  of  West  Bow 166 

Bakehouse  Close 176 

White  Horse  Close 189 

Reid's  Close,  Canongate 198 

Doorway,  Sir  A.  Aitcheson's  House 209 

Linlithgow  Palace. 220 


vi  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Falkland  Palace 235 

St.  Andrews 276 

St.  Giles's  from  Prince's  Street 280 

Knox's  House,  High  Street 298 

Holyrood  Palace  and  Arthur's  Seat 305 

Lochleven 319 

Queen  Mary's  Bath 322 

West  Doorway,  Holyrood  Chapel 328 

Doorway,  Holyrood  Palace 337 

Moray  House,  Canongate 347 

The  Pends,  St.  Andrews 353 

Interior  of  St.  Giles's 350 

Knox'sPulpit 358 

North  Doorway,  Heriot's  Hospital 307 

Stirling  Castle 403 

Greyfriars  Churchyard 419 

Edinburgh :  General  View 420 

Allan  Ramsay's  Shop 423 

Crown  of  St.  Giles's 429 

Smollett's  House 436 

Allan  Ramsay's  House 444 

Allan  Ramsay's  Monument 451 

Lady  Stair's  Close 459 

Dugald  Stewart's  Monument 403 

Burns's  Monument 408 

Salisbury  Crags 472 

The  University  of  Edinburgh 474 

Playfair's  Monument,  Calton  Hill 479 

Sir  Walter  Scott's  House 491 

George  Street,  Edinburgh 494 

Sir  Walter  Scott..,  .  495 


(JUEEN  MARGARET'S  CHAPEL,   EDINBURGH  CASTLE. 


PART  I. 

MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND,   ATHELING— 
QUEEN  AND   SAINT. 

IT  is  strange  yet  scarcely  difficult  to  the  imagination  to 
realize  the  first  embodiment  of  what  is  now  Edinburgh  in 
the  far  distance  of  the  early  ages.  Neither  Pict  nor  Scot 
has  left  any  record  of  what  was  going  on  so  far  south  in 
the  days  when  the  king's  daughters,  primitive  princesses 
with  their  rude  surroundings,  were  placed  for  safety  in 
the  castrum  puellarum,  the  maiden  castle,  a  title  in  after 


2  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

days  proudly  (but  perhaps  not  very  justly)  adapted  to  the 
supposed  invulnerability  of  the  fortress  perched  upon  its 
rock.  Very  nearly  invulnerable,  however,  it  must  have 
been  in  the  days  before  artillery  ;  too  much  so  at  least 
for  one  shut-up  princess,  who  complained  of  her  lofty 
prison  as  a  place  without  verdure.  If  we  may  believe, 
notwithstanding  the  protest  of  that  much-deceived  anti- 
quary the  Laird  of  Monkbarns,  that  these  fair  and  forlorn 
ladies  were  the  first  royal  inhabitants  of  the  Castle  of 
Edinburgh,  we  may  imagine  that  they  watched  from  their 
battlements  more  wistfully  than  fearfully,  over  all  the 
wide  plain,  what  dust  might  rise  or  spears  might  gleam,  or 
whether  any  galley  might  be  visible  of  reiver  or  rescuer 
from  the  north.  A  little  collection  of  huts  or  rude  forts 
here  and  there  would  ba  all  that  broke  the  sweeping  line 
of  Lothian  to  the  east  or  west,  and  all  that  width  of 
landscape  would  lie  under  the  eyes  of  the  watchers,  giv- 
ing long  notice  of  the  approach  of  any  enemies.  "  Out 
over  the  Forth  I  look  to  the  north,"  the  maidens  might 
sing,  looking  across  to  Dunfermline,  where  already  there 
was  some  royal  state,  or  towards  the  faint  lines  of  moun- 
tains in  the  distance,  over  the  soft  swelling  heights  of  the 
Lomonds.  Xo  doubt  Edinburgh,  Edwinesburgh,  or 
whatever  the  antiquaries  imagine  it  to  have  been,  must 
have  been  sadly  dull  if  safe,  suspended  high  upon  the 
rock,  nearer  heaven  than  earth.  It  is  curious  to  hear 
that  it  was  "without  verdure  "  ;  but  perhaps  the  young 
ladies  took  no  account  of  the  trees  that  clothed  the  preci- 
pices below  them,  or  the  greenness  that  edged  the  Xor' 
Loch  deep  at  their  feet,  but  sighed  for  the  gardens  and 
luxuriance  of  Dunfermline,  where  all  was  green  about 
their  windows  and  the  winding  pathways  of  the  dell  of 
Pittendreich  would  be  pleasant  to  wander  in.  This 
first  romantic  aspect  of  the  Castle  of  Edinburgh  is, 
however,  merely  traditional,  and  the  first  real  and 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  3 

authentic  appearance  of  the  old  fortress  £nd  city  in  his- 
tory is  in  the  record,  at  once  a  sacred  legend  and  a  valuable 
historical  chronicle,  of  the  life  of  Margaret  the  Atheling, 
the  first  of  several  Queen  Margarets,  the  woman  saint  and 
blessed  patroness  of  Scotland,  who  has  bequeathed  not 
only  many  benefits  and  foundations  of  after  good  to  her 
adopted  country,  but  her  name — perhaps  among  Scots- 
women still  the  most  common  of  all  Christian  names. 

Xo  more  moving  and  delightful  story  was  ever  written 
or  invented  than. the  history  of  this  saint  and  Queen. 
She  was  the  daughter  of  Edward,  called  the  Outlaw,  and 
of  his  wife  a  princess  of  Hungary,  of  the  race  which  after- 
wards produced  St.  Elizabeth  :  and  the  sister  of  Edgar 
Atheling,  the  feeble  but  rightful  heir  of  the  Saxon  line, 
and  consequently  of  the  English  throne.  The  family, 
however,  was  more  foreign  than  English,  having  been 
brought  up  at  the  Court  of  their  grandfather,  the  King 
of  Hungary,  one  of  the  most  pious  and  one  of  the  richest 
Courts  in  Christendom ;  and  it  was  not  unnatural  that 
when  convinced  of  the  fact  that  the  most  legitimate  of 
aspirants  had  no  chance  against  the  force  of  William, 
they  should  prefer  to  return  to  the  country  of  their  edu- 
cation and  birth.  It  was  no  doubt  a  somewhat  forlorn 
party  that  set  out  upon  this  journey,  for  to  lose  a  throne 
is  seldom  a  misfortune  accepted  with  equanimity,  and 
several  of  the  beaten  and  despondent  Saxons  had  joined 
the  royal  exiles.  Their  voyage,  however,  was  an  unpros- 
perous  one,  and  after  much  beating  about  by  winds  and 
storms  they  were  at  last  driven  up  the  Firth  of  Forth, 
where  their  ship  found  shelter  in  the  little  bay  at  the 
narrowing  of  the  Firth,  which  has  since  borne  the  name 
of  St.  Margaret's  Hope. 

Lying  here  in  shelter  from  all  the  winds  behind  the 
protecting  promontory,  with  perhaps  already  some  hum- 
ble shrine  or  hermit's  cell  upon  Inchgarvie  or  luchcolm 


4.  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

to  give  them  'promise  of  Christian  kindness  with  the 
lonely  rock  of  Edinburgh  in  the  distance  on  one  side,  and 
the  soft  slopes  of  the  Fife  coast  rising  towards  the  King's 
palace  at  Dunfermline  on  the  other,  the  travelers  must 
have  awaited  with  some  anxiety,  yet  probably  much  hope, 
the  notice  of  the  barbaric  people  who  came  to  the  beach 
to  stare  at  their  weather-beaten  ships,  and  hurried  off  to 
carry  the  news  inland  of  such  unwonted  visitors.  It  is 
the  very  spot  which  is  now  disturbed  and  changed  by  the 
monstrous  cobwebs  of  iron  which  bear  the  weight  of  the 
Forth  Bridge  and  make  an  end  forever  of  the  Queen's 
Ferry,  which  Margaret  must  have  crossed  so  often,  and 
by  which  a  personage  more  familiar,  Mr.  Jonathan  Old- 
buck,  once,  as  we  all  know,  made  his  way  to  the  Xorth  ; 
but  these  are  modern  reflections  such  as  have  nothing  to 
do  with  that  primitive  morning,  fresh  no  doubt  as  to-day 
with  sun  and  dew,  when  Malcolm's  messengers  came 
hurrying  down  to  see  what  were  these  intruders,  and 
what  their  purpose,  and  whether  anything  was  to  be  ap- 
prehended from  a  visit  apparently  so  unusual.  The  eager 
and  curious  emissaries  had  apparently  no  warrant  to  board 
the  strangers,  but  gazed  and  wondered  at  the  big  ship 
and  all  its  equipments,  so  unlike  their  own  rude  galleys ; 
then  hastened  back  again  with  an  excited  and  exciting 
description  of  the  greatness  of  the  passengers  on  board 
and  all  their  splendid  array.  Malcolm,  cautious  yet  ex- 
cited too,  sent  forth  as  we  are  told  in  the  Scotichronicon, 
"his  wisest  councilors''  to  make  further  inquiries. 
They  too  were  astonished  by  the  splendor  of  all  they 
saw,  and  especially  by  the  mien  of  a  certain  lady  among 
these  strangers,  "whom,  by  her  incomparable  beauty, 
and  the  pleasantness  of  her  jocund  speech,  I  imagined 
to  be  the  chief  of  the  family,"  said  the  spokesman  ;  "  nor 
was  it  wonderful,"  adds  the  chronicler,  "that  they 
should  believe  her  to  be  the  chief  who  was  destined  to  be 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  5 

Queen  of  Scotland  and  also  heir  of  England."  Perhaps 
it  was  the  after  light  of  these  events  that  conveyed  that 
high  appreciation  of  Margaret's  qualities  into  the  story, 
for  she  must  have  been  quite  young,  and  it  is  very  un- 
likely that  in  presence  of  her  mother,  and  the  brother 
whom  they  all  considered  as  the  King  of  England,  a 
young  girl,  however  gifted,  would  have  taken  upon  her 
the  chief  place. 

The  report  he  received,  however,  had  so  much  effect 
upon  King  Malcolm  that  he  went  himself  to  visit  the 
strangers  in  their  ship.  He  was  not  a  mere  barbaric  prince, 
to  be  dazzled  by  the  sight  of  these  great  persons,  but  no 
doubt  had  many  a  lingering  recollection  in  his  mind  of 
Siward's  great  house  in  Northumberland,  where  he  had 
taken  refuge  after  his  father's  murder.  It  is  curious  and 
bewildering  to  go  back  in  that  dawn  of  national  life  to 
familiar  Shaksperian  regions,  and  to  think  that  this  primi- 
tive King  who  had  so  much  in  him  of  the  savage,  along 
with  all  his  love  and  gentleness,  was  the  son  of  that  gracious 
Duncan  who  addressed  his  hostess  like  a  kingly  gentleman 
though  her  hospitality  was  to  be  so  fatal.  King  Malcolm 
came  down,  no  doubt  with  such  state  as  he  could  muster, 
to  see  the  wandering  foreign  princes.  He  was  not  un- 
learned, but  knew  Latin  and  the  English  tongue,  though 
he  could  not  read,  as  we  are  afterwards  told.  He  had 
already  reigned  for  fourteen  years,  after  about  as  long  a 
period  of  exile,  so  that  he  could  not  now  be  in  his  first 
youth,  although  he  was  still  unmarried.  He  came  down 
with  his  suite  to  the  shore  amid  all  the  stir  of  the  inquir- 
ing country  folk,  gathered  about  to  see  this  strange  thing — 
the  ship  with  its  unusual  equipments,  and  the  group  of 
noble  persons  in  their  fine  clothes  who  were  to  be  seen 
upon  the  deck.  The  Athelings  were  carrying  back  with 
them  to  Hungary  all  the  gifts  with  which  the  Emperor, 
Henry  III.  had  loaded  their  father  when  he  went  to 


6  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

England,  and  had  jewels  and  vessels  of  gold  and  many 
fine  things  unknown  to  the  Scots.  And  Margaret,  even 
though  not  so  prominent  as  the  chroniclers  say,  was 
evidently  by  the  consent  of  all  a  most  gracious  and  cour- 
teous young  lady,  with  unusual  grace  and  vivacity  of 
speech.  The  grave  middle-aged  King,  with  his  recollec- 
tions of  a  society  more  advanced  than  his  own,  which 
probably  had  made  him  long  for  something  better  than 
his  rude  courtiers  could  supply,  would  seem  at  once  to 
have  fallen  under  the  spell  of  the  wandering  princess. 
She  was  such  a  mate  as  a  poor  Scots  King,  badgered  by 
turbulent  clans,  could  scarcely  have  hoped  to  find — rich 
and  fair  and  young,  and  of  the  best  blood  in  Christendom. 
Whether  the  wooing  was  as  short  as  the  record  we  have 
no  means  of  knowing,  but  in  the  same  year,  1070,  Mar- 
garet was  brought  with  great  rejoicing  to  Dunfermline, 
and  there  married  to  her  King,  amid  the  general  joy. 

The  royal  house  at  Dunfermline,  according  to  the 
chronicle,  was  surrounded  by  a  dense  forest  and  guarded 
by  immense  cliffs.  The  latter  particular,  however,  it  is 
difficult  to  accept,  for  the  dell  in  which  the  ruins  of  the 
medieval  palace  (a  building  much  more  recent,  it  is  need- 
less to  say,  than  that  of  Malcolm)  still  stand,  though 
picturesque  in  its  acclivities  and  precipices,  is  as  far  as 
possible  from  including  any  cliffs  that  could  be  called 
immense.  The  young  Queen  made  a  great  change  in  the 
internal  arrangements  of  what  was  no  doubt  a  grim  strong- 
hold enough,  soft  as  was  the  country  around.  Probably 
the  absence  of  decoration  and  ornament  struck  her  pain- 
fully, accustomed  as  she  was  to  palaces  of  a  very  different 
kind — for  almost  the  first  thing  we  hear  in  the  contem- 
porary history  written  by  her  confessor  Theodoric,  after- 
wards a  monk  at  Durham,  is  of  the  workshops  and  rooms 
for  embroidery  and  all  the  arts  which  were  established  in 
Dunfermline,  presumably  in  the  palace  itself  under  Mar- 


PILLAR  IN  NAVE,  DUNFERMLINE  ABBEY.-Page  6. 

Royal  Edinburgh. 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  7 

garet's  own  eye,  for  the  beautifying  of  the  great  church 
which  she  founded  there,  and  also  no  doubt  for  her  own 
house.  Certain  women  of  good  birth  were  judged  worthy 
to  share  the  Queen's  work,  and  lived  with  her,  it  would 
seem,  in  a  kind  of  seclusion,  seeing  only  such  chosen 
visitors  as  Margaret  brought  with  her  to  cheer  their 
labors,  and  forswearing  all  idle  talk  and  frivolity.  The 
Queen  had  such  austerity  mingled  with  her  graciousness 
and  such  grace  with  her  severity,  says  her  monkish  bio- 
grapher, loving  an  antithesis,  that  all  feared  and  respected 
her  presence.  "Her  life  was  full  of  moderation  and 
gentleness,  her  speech  contained  the  very  salt  of  wisdom ; 
even  her  silence  was  full  of  good  thoughts." 

This  biographer — according  to  the  conscientious  and 
painstaking  investigations  of  the  Bollandist  Fathers,  who 
examine  in  their  careful  way  all  the  guarantees  and  tradi- 
tions of  the  manuscript  with  a  jealousy  worthy  of  the 
most  enlightened  historians — is  not  Turgot,  who  is  usually 
credited  with  it,  but  Theodoric,  a  monk  of  Durham,  who 
must  have  shared  with  Turgot,  at  some  period  of  his  life, 
the  office  of  spiritual  director  and  confidant  to  the  Queen. 
It  is  curious  that  both  these  writers  should  have  passed 
from  the  northern  Court  to  the  community  at  Durham, 
of  which  Turgot  was  prior  and  Theodoric  a  simple  brother  ; 
yet  not  so  strange  either,  for  Durham  was  largely  pat- 
ronized and  enriched  by  Margaret  and  her  husband,  their 
kingdom  at  this  period  reaching  as  far  south.  Of  Turgot's 
Life,  which  was  presumably  written  in  the  vernacular, 
there  seems  nothing  existing ;  but  that  of  Theodoric  is 
very  full,  and  contains  many  details  which  set  before  us 
the  life  of  the  simple  Court,  with  its  many  labors  and 
charities  :  the  King  full  of  reverence  and  tender  surprise 
and  admiration  of  all  his  wife's  perfections  ;  the  young 
saint  herself,  sweet  and  bright  in  modest  gravity  amid  a 
tumultuous  world  little  respectful  of  women,  full  of  the 


8  ROYAL  EDINBURGH.  . 

excessive  charity  of  the  age  and  of  her  race,  and  of  those 
impulses  of  decoration  and  embellishment  which  were 
slow  to  develop  among  the  ruder  difficulties  of  the  north. 
Tlreodoric  himself  must  have  been  more  or  less  of  an  artist, 
for  in  speaking  of  the  "golden  vases  "  and  ornaments  for 
the  altars  of  her  new  church  which  Margaret  devised,  "  I 
myself  carried  out  the  work,"  he  says.  These  must  have 
been  busy  days  in  Malcolm's  primitive  palace  while  the 
workmen  were  busy  with  the  great  cathedral  close  by,  the 
mason  with  his  mallet,  the  homely  sculptor  with  his  chisel, 
carving  those  interlaced  and  embossed  arches  which  still 
stand,  worn  and  gray,  but  little  injured,  in  the  wonderful 
permanency  of  stone,  in  the  nave  of  the  old  Abbey  of 
Dunfermline  :  while  the  Queen's  rooms  opened  into  the 
hall  where  her  ladies  sat  over  their  embroidery,  among 
all  the  primitive  dyes  that  art  had  caught  from  herbs  and 
traditional  mixtures,  on  one  hand — and  on  the  other  into 
noisier  workshops,  where  workmen  with  skilful  delicate 
hammers  were  beating  out  the  shining  gold  and  silver  into 
sacred  vessels  and  symbols  of  piety.  Margaret  along  with 
her  stores  of  more  vulgar  wealth,  and  the  ingots  which 
were  consecrated  to  the  manufacture  of  crucifix  and 
chalice,  had  brought  many  holy  relics  :  and  no  doubt  the 
cases  and  shrines  in  which  these  were  enclosed  afforded 
models  for  the  new,  over  which  Father  Theodoric,  with 
his  monkish  cape  and  cowl  laid  aside,  and  his  shaven 
crown  shining  in  the  glow  of  the  furnace,  was  so  busy. 
What  a  pleasant  stir  of  occupation  and  progress,  the  best 
and  most  trustworthy  evidences  of  growing  civilization, 
must  have  arisen  within  the  shelter  of  the  woods  which 
framed  that  center  of  development  and  new  life  :  the  new 
abbey  rising  day  by  day,  a  white  and  splendid  reality  in 
the  clearing  among  the  trees  ;  the  bells,  symbols  of  peace 
and  pleasantness,  sounding  out  over  the  half-savage 
country  ;  the  chants  and  songs  of  divine  worship  swelling 


.  _*£j5ji 


DUNFERMLINE  ,\BBEY,-Page 8. 


Boyal  Edinburgh. 


MARGAEET  OF  SCOTLAND.  9 

upward  to  the  skies.  Margaret's  royal  manufactory  of 
beautiful  things,  her  tapestries  and  metal  work,  her  ad- 
aptation of  all  the  possibilities  of  ornament  latent  in 
every  primitive  community,  with  the  conviction,  always 
ennobling  to  art,  that  by  these  means  of  sacred  adornment 
she  and  her  assistants  and  coadjutors  were  serving  and 
pleasing  God,  no  doubt  consoled  her  ardent  and  active 
spirit  for  the  loss  of  many  comforts  and  graces  with  which 
she  must  have  been  familiar.  At  the  same  time  her  new 
sphere  of  influence  was  boundless,  and  the  means  in  her 
hand  of  leavening  and  molding  her  new  country  almost 
unlimited — a  thing  above  all  others  delightful  to  a  woman, 
to  whom  the  noiseless  and  gradual  operation  of  influence 
is  the  chief  weapon  in  the  world. 

There  is  nothing,  however,  in  this  history  more  charm- 
ing than  the  description  of  the  relations  between  the  royal 
pair.  King  Malcolm  had  probably  known  few  graces  in 
life  except  those,  a  step  or  two  in  advance  of  his  own, 
which  were  to  be  found  in  Northumberland  in  the  house 
of  Earl  Si  ward  ;  and  after  the  long  practical  struggle  of 
his  reign  between  the  Scots  and  Celts,  who  had  already  so 
far  settled  down  together  as  to  constitute  something  which 
could  be  called  a  kingdom,  he  had  no  doubt  fallen  even 
from  that  higher  plane  of  civilization.  Such  rude  state  as 
the  presence  of  a  queen  even  in  those  primitive  days  might 
have  procured  had  been  wanting,  and  all  his  faculties  were 
probably  absorbed  in  keeping  peace  between  the  unruly 
chieftains,  and  fostering  perhaps  here  and  there  the  first 
rising  of  a  little  community  of  burghers,  strong  enough 
by  union  to  defend  themselves.  Uneasy,  there  can  be 
little  doubt,  was  often  the  head  which  bore  the  circlet  of 
troubled  supremacy  among  all  those  half-subdued  tribes  ; 
and  his  dwelling  in  the  heart  of  the  "dense  forest,"  amid 
all  the  noisy  retainers  in  the  hall  and  jealous  nobles  in 
the  council  chamber,  would  leave  little  room  for  beauty 


10  EOYAL  EDINBURGH. 

or  sweetness  of  any  kind.  When  the  stranger  princess 
suddenly  came  in  like  an  enchantment,  with  her  lovely 
looks  and  "  jocund  eloquence  " — full  of  smiles  and  pleas- 
ant speech,  yet  with  a  dignity  which  overawed  every 
rude  beholder — into  these  rude  and  noisy  halls,  with  so 
many  graceful  ways  and  beautiful  garments  and  sparkling 
jewels,  transforming  the  very  chambers  with  embroidered 
hangings  and  all  the  rare  embellishments  of  a  lady's  bower, 
with  which  no  doubt  the  ship  had  been  provided,  and 
which  medieval  princesses,  like  modern  fine  ladies,  carried 
about  with  them — the  middle-aged  man  of  war  was  evi- 
dently altogether  subdued  and  enraptured.  To  see  her 
absorbed  in  prayer — an  exercise  which  Malcolm  had  per- 
haps felt  to  be  the  occupation  of  monks  and  hermits  only 
— to  see  her  bending  over  her  beautiful  book  with  all  its 
pictures,  reading  the  sacred  story  there,  filled  him  with 
awe  and  a  kind  of  adoration.  He  could  not  himself  read, 
which  made  the  wonder  all  the  more  ;  but  though  inca- 
pable of  mastering  what  was  within,  he  loved  to  handle 
and  turn  over  the  book  from  which  his  beautiful  wife  de- 
rived her  wisdom,  touching  it  Avith  his  rude  hands  with 
caressing  touches,  and  kissing  the  pages  she  loved. 
When  he  found  one  manuscript  which  she  particularly 
esteemed,  he  "  sent  for  his  goldsmith"  and  had  the 
vellum  encased  in  gold  and  ornamented  with  jewels ; 
then  carried  it  back  to  her  with  such  fond  pleasure 
as  may  be  easily  imagined.  Margaret  on  her  part  did 
what  she  could  to  secure  to  her  King  some  of  the  punc- 
tilios of  reverential  respect  due  in  her  knowledge  to  a 
monarch.  She  suggested  the  formation  of  a  royal  guard 
to  protect  the  King's  person  and  surround  him  with  honor 
and  observance.  She  filled  the  palace  with  her  wealth, 
adorning  it  in  every  way,  providing  fine  clothes  for  the 
retainers  and  so  enriching  the  house  that  the  table  was 
served  with  dishes  of  gold  and  silver.  And  it  would  seem 


WEST  TOWER,  DUNFER.MLINE  ABBEY.— Page  10. 

Royal  Edinburgh. 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND. 


11 


that  the  reputation  of  a  new  and  splendid  Court  thus  sud- 
denly evolved  among  the  northern  mists  got  abroad,  and 
brought  merchants  with  their  wares  up  the  Firth,  and 


QEEEN  MARGARET'S  CAVE. 


quickened,  if  it  did  not  altogether  originate,  the  first  feeble 
current  gf  trade  which  was  the  precursor  and  origin  of 
all  our  after  wealth  in  Scotland. 


12  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

This  was  not  all,  however,  that  Margaret  did  for  the 
commonwealth.  If  we  may  trust  her  biographer,  it  was 
she  who  established  that  great  principle  of  reform  so  im- 
portant in  all  states,  and  generally  one  of  the  later  fruits 
of  civilization,  that  the  soldiers  should  be  prevented  from 
exacting  or  putting  under  requisition  the  peaceful  people 
about,  and  that  all  they  had  should  be  honestly  paid  for, 
which  was  the  last  thing  likely  to  be  thought  of  by  a 
medieval  prince.  Altogether  Margaret's  influence  was 
exerted  for  the  best  purposes  to  induce  her  husband  "  to 
relinquish  his  barbarous  manners  and  live  honestly  and 
civilly,"  as  the  chronicler  says.  It  was  perhaps  not  so 
good  an  exercise  of  her  power  when  she  opened  arguments, 
apparently  through  Malcolm  as  interpreter,  with  the 
native  clergy  of  Scotland,  the  hermits  and  ecclesiastics 
of  Columba's  strain,  and  the  mysterious  Culdees  of  whom 
we  know  so  little.  The  one  certain  fact  fully  established 
concerning  them  being,  that  they  kept  Easter  at  a  differ- 
ent date  from  that  appointed  by  Eome.  The  King, 
though  no  scholar,  would  seem  to  have  been  a  linguist  in 
his  way,  since  he  spoke  both  languages,  that  is  the  Saxon, 
and  the  Celtic  or  Pictish,  again  a  most  difficult  ques- 
tion to  determine — with  a  smattering  of  Latin  ;  and 
was  thus  able  to  act  as  Margaret's  mouthpiece  in  her 
arguments.  She  found  fault  with  the  Celts  not  only  for 
the  date  of  their  Easter,  but  for  the  habit  of  not  com- 
municating at  that  festival.  It  is  very  curious  to  note  in 
their  answer  the  very  same  reason  which  has  prevailed  in 
later  days  among  all  the  changes  of  faith  and  ceremonial, 
and  is  still  put  forth  in  Highland  parishes  as  an  excuse 
for  the  small  number  of  communicants.  The  Celtic 
priests  and  bishops  defended  their  flocks  by  producing  the 
words  of  St.  Paul,  in  Avhich  that  Apostle  says  that  those 
who  eat  and  drink  unworthily  cat  and  drink  condemna- 
tion to  themselves.  So,  according  to  Theodoric,  the 


THE  NAVE,  DUNFERMLINE  ABBEY-LOOKIXG  WEST.-Page  13. 

Royal  Edinburgh. 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND. 


13 


Celtic  party  in  the  Church  answered  Margaret,  and  so 
would  their  descendants,  the  "  Men  "  of  the  Highlands, 
answer  at  this  day.  The  integrity  of  the  tradition  is  very 


"WEST  DOORWAY.   DUNFKRMLINE  ABBEY. 


remarkable.  On  the  other  hand,  they  offended  the  de- 
vout Queen  by  their  neglect  of  Sunday,  a  reproach  which 
cannot  be  addressed  to  their  descendants. 


14  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

These  theological  [discussions  between  the  fair  and 
learned  Queen  and  the  Highland  ecclesiastics  and  anchor- 
ites, carried  on  by  means  of  her  chief  convert  the  warrior 
King,  whom  love  for  her  had  taught  to  respect  and  share 
in  her  devotion,  must  have  afforded  many  picturesque 
and  striking  scenes,  though  unfortunately  there  was  no 
modern  observer  there  to  be  interested  and  amused,  but 
only  Theodoric  standing  by,  himself  very  hot  upon  the 
atrocity  of  a  miscalculated  Easter,  and  perhaps  helping 
his  royal  mistress  here  and  there  with  an  argument. 
Naturally  his  story  is  especially  full  upon  the  religious  side 
of  Margaret's  life — her  much  prayer,  her  humility  and  rev- 
erence during  the  services  of  the  Church,  an  intent  and 
silent  listener  to  all  teachings,  only  a  little  disposed  to 
rebel  now  and  then  when  her  confessor  passed  too  lightly 
over  her  faults.  As  for  her  charities,  they  were  bound- 
less. It  was  not  for  nothing  that  the  blood  of  St.  Ursula, 
and  that  which  was  to  give  life  to  still  another  saint, 
Elizabeth  of  Hungary,  was  in  her  veins.  It  was  needless  to 
say  that  nobody  in  those  days  had  discovered  the  evil  of 
indiscriminate  alms-giving,  which  was,  on  the  contrary, 
considered  one  of  the  first  of  Christian  virtues.  Mar- 
garet was  the  providence  of  all  the  poor  around  her. 
Her  biographer  tells  us  naively,  with  no  sense  that  the 
result  was  not  one  to  be  proud  of,  that  the  fame  of 
her  bounty  and  kindness  brought  the  poor  in  crowds 
to  every  place  where  she  was.  When  she  went  out  they 
crowded,  round  her  like  children  round  their  mother. 
AVhen  she  had  distributed  everything  she  had  of  her  own 
she  took  garments  and  other  things  from  her  courtiers  and 
attendants  to  give  away,  a  spoliation  to  which  they  con- 
sented willingly,  knowing  that  the  value  of  everything  thus 
appropriated  would  be  returned  to  them — an  excellent 
reason  for  acquiescence.  This  "  rapine  of  piety  "  was  so 
strong  in  her  that  she  sometimes  even  appropriated  to  her 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  15 

poor  certain  of  the  gold  pieces  which  it  was  the  King's 
custom  to  offer  at  Easter  to  the  Church — a  pious  robbery 
which  Malcolm  pretended  not  to  perceive  until  he  caught 
her  in  the  act,  when  he  accused  her  with  a  laugh  of  ten- 
der amusement  for  her  rapacity.  In  all  the  touches  by 
which  the  sympathetic  priest  delineates  the  union  of  this 
pair  there  is  something  at  once  humorous  and  pathetic  in 
the  figure  of  the  King,  the  rough  old  warrior,  always  fol- 
lowing with  his  eyes  the  angelic  saintly  figure  by  his  side, 
all  believing  half  adoring,  and  yet  not  without  that  gleam 
of  amusement  at  the  woman's  absolute, unhesitating  enthu- 
siasm— an  amusement  mingled  with  admiration  and  re- 
spect,but  still  a  smile — a  delighted  surprise  at  all  her  amaz- 
ing ways,  and  wonder  what  she  will  do  next,  though  every- 
thing in  his  eyes  was  perfect  that  she  did — such  as  may 
still  be  seen  in  the  eyes  of  many  a  world-worn  husband 
looking  on  at  the  movements  of  that  director,  more  sim- 
ple, yet  more  subtle  being,  and  the  quick  absolutism  and 
certainty  of  the  bright  spirit  at  his  side.  The  gray- 
bearded  old  soldier,  leader  of  many  a  raid  and  victor  in 
many  a  struggle,  with  his  new  revelation  of  beauty  and 
purity  bursting  upon  his  later  life,  becomes  to  us  a 
recognizable  and  friendly  human  soul  in  these  glimpses 
we  have  of  him,  unintentional  and  by  the  way.  Theo- 
doric  himself  must  have  liked  Malcolm,  half-barbarian  as 
he  was,  and  even  admired  the  look  of  ardent  supplication 
which  would  come  into  the  King's  face,  "  a  great  intent- 
ness  and  emotion,"  such  as  seemed  to  him  extraordinary 
in  a  secular  person,  and  which  his  wife's  beautiful  example 
and  the  contagion  of  her  piety  alone  could  have  developed. 
Among  Margaret's  many  duties  there  was  one  which 
throws  a  very  strange  light  upon  the  time.  Just  before 
her  arrival  in  Scotland,  King  Malcolm  had  been  carrying 
fire  and  sword  through  Northumberland  in  one  of  the 
many  raids  over  the  Border  which  were  the  commonplace 


16  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

of  the  time — if  indeed  we  may  speak  of  the  Border  at 
such  an  unsettled  and  shifting  period  when  the  limits  of 
the  kingdoms  were  so  little  certain.  The  issue  of  this 
raid  was  that  Scotland,  probably  meaning  for  the  most 
part  Lothian,  the  southern  portion  of  the  country,  was 
filled  with  English  captives,  apportioned  as  slaves,  or 
servants  at  least,  through  the  entire  population,  so  that 
scarcely  a  house  was  without  one,  either  male  or  female. 
The  Queen  interested  herself  particularly  in  these  cap- 
tives, as  was  natural ;  sometimes  paying  the  ransom  ex- 
acted for  them,  and  in  all  cases  defending  and  protecting 
them.  Her  emissaries  went  about  among  them  inquir- 
ing into  their  condition  and  how  they  were  treated, 
visiting  them  from  house  to  house  :  and  all  that  Margaret 
could  do  to  mitigate  the  evils  of  their  captivity  was 
done.  Nothing  can  be  more  strange  than  to  realize  a 
time  when  Northumbrian  prisoners  of  war  could  be  house 
slaves  in  Lothian.  No  doubt  what  was  true  on  one  side 
was  true  on  the  other,  and  Scotch  captives  had  their  turn 
of  similar  bondage. 

In  those  days  the  ancient  county  which  her  children 
love  to  call  the  Kingdom  of  Fife  was  far  more  than  Edin- 
burgh, then  a  mere  fortress  standing  up  on  an  invulner- 
able rock  in  the  middle  of  a  fertile  plain,  the  center  of 
the  national  life.  Not  only  was  the  King's  residence  at 
Dunfermline,  but  the  great  Cathedral  of  St.  Andrews 
was  the  ecclesiastical  capital  gradually  working  out  that 
development  of  Roman  supremacy  and  regularity  which 
soon  swept  away  all  that  was  individual  in  the  apostleship 
of  St.  Columba  and  the  faith  of  his  followers.  That  the 
King  and  Queen  were  frequently  at  Edinburgh  is  evident 
from  the  fact  that  Margaret  had  her  oratory  and  chapel 
on  the  very  apex  of  the  rock,  and  had  there  established  a 
center  of  worship  and  spiritual  life.  St.  Andrews,  how- 
ever, was  the  center  of  influence,  the  shrine  to  which 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  17 

pilgrims  flowed,  and  the  pious  Queen,  in  her  care  for 
every  office  of  religion  and  eagerness  to  facilitate  every 
exercise  of  piety,  gave  special  thought  to  the  task  of  mak- 
ing the  way  easy  and  safe  towards  that  holy  metropolis. 
The  Canterbury  of  the  north  was  divided  from  the  other 
half  of  Malcolm's  kingdom  by  that  sea  which  in  these 
later  days,  at  much  cost  of  beauty,  money,  and  life,  has 
been  bridged  over  and  shortened — "  the  sea  which  divides 
Lothian  from  Scotland  "  according  to  the  chronicler, 
"the  Scottish  Sea"  as  it  is  called  by  others,  the  mighty 
Firth,  which  to  the  rude  galleys  of  the  little  trading  vil- 
lages along  its  shores  must  have  been  a  sea  dangerous  and 
troubled,  full  of  risks  and  perils.  The  Queen,  we  are 
told,  erected  houses  of  shelter  on  either  side  of  this 
angry  strait,  and  established  what  we  should  call  a  line 
of  passenger  boats  to  take  the  pilgrims  over  at  the  expense 
of  the  State.  One  wonders  how  much  or  how  little  of 
State  policy  might  mingle  in  this  pious  act,  for  no  doubt 
the  establishment  of  an  easy  and  constant  means  of  com- 
munication between  the  wealthy  Lothians  and  the  then 
center  of  national  life  must  have  been  of  unspeakable  use 
in  consolidating  a  kingdom  still  so  imperfectly  knit  to- 
gether and  divided  by  the  formidable  line  of  the  great 
estuary.  It  is  one  drawback  of  a  religious  chronicler 
that  no  such  motive,  large  and  noble  as  it  might  be,  is 
thought  of,  since  even  national  advantage  counted  so 
much  less  than  the  cultivation  of  piety.  And  it  is  very 
likely  that  Margaret  thought  of  nothing  else,  and  reck- 
oned a  prayer  at  the  shrine  of  the  patron  saint  as  far 
more  important  than  the  intercommunications  thus 
established  and  the  knowledge  of  each  other  thus  acquired 
by  the  different  parts  of  a  kingdom  which  still  retained 
the  differences  of  separate  nationalities.  A  mingled  aim, 
a  practical  motive,  might  not  have  accomplished  half  so 
much ;  but  no  doubt  among  Malcolm's  men,  his  gray- 


18  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

beards  pondering  in  council,  or  perhaps  himself  thinking 
of  many  things  as  he  protected  all  his  wife's  schemes, 
there  was  a  dawning  perception,  along  with  the  undoubted 
advantages  of  piety,  of  a  national  use  in  the  quickened 
intercourse  and  securely  established  communications.  If 
so  he  would  probably  blame  himself  for  a  mixed  motive  by 
the  side  of  Margaret's  pure  and  absolute  heavenly-minded- 
ness,  yet  take  pleasure  in  the  secondary  unacknowledged 
good  all  the  same. 

Thus  their  life  went  on  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury in  a  course  of  national  development  to  which  every- 
thing contributed,  even  the  love  of  splendor  which  Mar- 
garet brought  with  her,  and  her  artistic  tastes,  and  the 
rage  for  decoration  and  beautiful  surroundings  which 
had  then  begun  to  be  so  strong  an  element  in  national 
progress.  She  had  many  children  in  the  midst  of  all  these 
labors  and  public  interests,  seven  sons  and  two  daugh- 
ters, whom  she  brought  up  most  carefully  in  all  the  per- 
fections of  her  own  faith.  Three  of  these  sons  succeeded 
one  after  the  other  to  the  Scottish  throne,  and  proved 
the  efficacy  of  her  teaching  by  piety  as  strong  and  as  liberal 
as  her  own.  It  was  in  the  year  1093  that  Margaret's  beau- 
tiful and  touching  life  came  to  an  end,  in  great  sorrow  yet 
triumph  and  pious  victory  over  trouble.  Before  this 
time,  but  at  a  date  not  indicated  in  the  narrative,  she 
had  parted  with  her  friend  and  biographer  Theodoric, 
probably  not  very  long  before  her  own  death,  as  we  are 
told  that  she  was  oppressed  by  forbodings,  or  rather  pre- 
monitions of  death  and  sorrow,  of  which  she  spoke  to  him 
with  tears.  When  the  moment  of  separation  came  both 
penitent  and  confessor  so  long  united  in  the  closest 
bonds  of  sympathy  wept  sore.  "  Farewell,"  said  the 
Queen ;  "  I  shall  not  live  long,  but  you  will  live  long 
f  "ter  me.  Eemember  my  soul  in  your  prayers,  and  take 
care  of  my  children  ;  cease  not  to  teach  and  admonish 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  19 

them,  especially  when  they  are  raised  to  great  estate." 
He  made  the  promise  with  tears,  not  daring  to  contradict 
her  by  happier  auguries,  and  in  this  way  took  his  last 
farewell  of  the  Queen,  and  never  saw  her  more.  He  con- 
tinues his  story,  however,  taking  it  from  the  lips  of  a 
priest  who  remained  with  her  during  the  rest  of  her  life, 
probably  also  a  Saxon,  since  he  became  a  monk  of  St. 
Cuthbert's  on  Margaret's  death. 

The  narrative  goes  on  with  an  account  of  the  declining 
health  of  the  Queen.  For  more  than  six  months  she  had 
been  unable  to  mount  a  horse,  or  sometimes  to  rise  from 
her  bed,  and  in  the  midst  of  this  illness  the  King  set  forth 
upon  one  of  his  raids  into  England,  on  what  provocation 
or  with  what  motive  it  is  difficult  to  tell,  except  that  the 
provocation  was  perpetual  and  the  motive  persistent  the 
leading  rule  of  life.  His  two  elder  sons  accompanied  him 
on  this  expedition,  which  for  some  reason  Margaret  had 
opposed,  "  much  dissuading  "  him  from  going  ;  but  this 
time,  unfortunately,  had  not  been  hearkened  to.  Prob- 
ably she  set  out  along  with  him,  on  her  way  to  Edinburgh 
to  pass  the  time  of  his  absence  there,  which  was  a  place 
where  news  could  be  had  more  readily  than  beyond  the 
sea  in  Fife.  The  solitary  castle,  high  perched  upon  its 
hill,  whence  messengers  could  be  seen  approaching,  or, 
better  still,  the  King's  banners  coming  back,  was  a  fitter 
home  for  an  anxious  wife  than  the  palace  over  the  Firth 
among  its  woods.  How  long  she  remained  there  we  are 
not  told,  and  there  are  now  unhappily  no  articulate  re- 
mains at  all  of  the  old  stronghold  which  must  have  risen 
upon  that  height,  with  its  low  massive  walls  and  rude 
buildings.  The  oldest  relic  in  Edinburgh  is  that  little 
sanctuary,  plain  and  bare  as  a  shed,  deprived  of  all  ex- 
ternal appearance  of  sanctity,  and  employed  for  vulgar 
uses  for  many  centuries,  which  has  been  at  length  di«t- 
covered  by  its  construction,  the  small  dark  chancel  arch 


20  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

and  rude  ornament,  to  have  been  a  chapel,  and  which 
there  seems  no  doubt  is  at  least  built  upon  the  site  conse- 
crated for  Margaret  s  oratory,  if  not  the  very  building 
itself.  It  is  small  enough,  and  primitive  enough  with  its 
little  line  of  toothed  ornament,  and  its  minute  windows 
sending  in  a  subdued  light  even  in  the  very  flush  of  day, 
to  be  of  any  antiquity.  I  believe  that  even  the  fortunate 
antiquary  who  had  the  happiness  of  discovering  it  does 
not  claim  for  this  little  chapel  the  distinction  of  being  the 
very  building  itself  which  Margaret  erected.  Yet  it  must 
have  been  one  very  similar,  identical  in  form  and  orna- 
ment, so  that  the  interested  spectator  may  well  permit 
himself  to  picture  the  sick  and  anxious  Queen,  worn  out 
with  illness  and  weighed  down  by  sore  forebodings,  kneel- 
ing there  in  the  faint  light  before  the  shadowed  altar, 
trying  to  derive  such  comfort  as  was  possible  from  the 
ministrations  of  the  priests,  and  following  with  her  prayers 
her  husband  and  her  boys,  so  young  still  and  not  hardened 
to  war,  who  might  be  falling  by  the  hands  perhaps  of  her 
own  kindred,  in  the  country  which  was  hers,  yet  which 
she  scarcely  knew.  In  the  intervals  of  these  anxious 
prayers,  when  her  failing  strength  permitted,  how  wist- 
fully the  Queen  and  her  ladies  must  have  gazed  from  the 
walls  far  around  on  every  side  to  watch  for  the  first  ap- 
pearance of  any  messenger  or  herald  of  return.  From 
the  woods  of  Dunfermline  and  its  soft  rural  landscape,  and 
the  new  abbey  with  its  sweet  singing  and  all  its  magnif- 
icence, it  must  have  been  a  change  indeed  to  dwell  im- 
prisoned so  near  the  sky,  within  the  low,  stern  rugged 
walls  of  the  primitive  fort,  with  a  few  rude  houses  cling- 
ing about  it,  and  the  little  chapel  on  the  rock,  small  and 
dark,  as  the  only  representative  of  the  stately  arches  and 
ornate  services  which  she  loved.  But  the  little  chapel  is 
deeply  involved  in  all  the  later  history  of  Margaret's  life. 
One  day  her  attendants  remarked  that  she  was  even 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND. 


21 


more  sad  than  her  wont,  and  questioning  her  received  a 
reply  which  must  have  made  them  tremble.  "  Perhaps 
to-day,"  she  said,  "a  great  evil  has  fallen  upon  the 


INTERIOR  OP  QUEEN   MARGARET'S  CHAPEL,    EDINBURGH  CASTLE. 

Scots,  such  as  has  not  happened  to  them  for  years."  Her 
hearers,  however  it  alarmed  them,  made  as  light  as  they 
.could  of  this  prophetic  foreboding  which  might  bo  hut  u 


22  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

deepened  impression  of  the  prevailing  despondency  in 
her  heart.  No  doubt  it  was  a  melancholy  night  in  the 
fortress,  where  the  women  who  had  husbands  or  sons  or 
brothers  in  .the  distant  army  would  cluster  together  in 
the  antechamber  and  watch  for  the  attendants  who  came 
and  went  behind  the  curtain  into  the  sick  chamber  where 
the  Queen,  visibly  sinking  day  by  day,  lay  sleepless  and 
sad,  listening  for  every  sound.  Terrors  surrounded  the 
castle  for  the  personal  safety  of  its  occupants  as  well  as 
for  their  brethren  in  the  wars  ;  and  no  doubt  there  would 
be  whispers  of  the  King's  brother,  Donald  Bane,  and  of 
the  watchful  jealous  Celtic  chiefs  all  ready  to  rise  with 
him,  should  an  opportunity  occur,  and  dash  the  stranger 
brood  from  the  throne.  All  these  sad  prognostications 
were  quickly  realized.  Next  morning  brought  messen- 
gers in  fear  and  distress  from  the  army  to  say  that  the 
King  had  fallen  at  Alnwick  in  Northumberland,  and  to 
prove  that  Margaret's  prophecy  had  been  fulfilled  at  the 
very  time  it  was  spoken.  It  was  November,  dark  and 
cheerless  both  within  and  without,  and  the  Queen  would 
seem  to  have  been  prostrated  for  a  day  or  two  by  the  sad 
news  :  but  on  the  fourth  day  she  rose  from  her  bed  and 
tottered  to  the  little  chapel  on  the  rock  to  hear  mass  for 
the  last  time,  and  receive  the  Holy  Sacrament  in  prepa- 
ration for  death.  She  then  returned  to  her  rooms  with 
the  pallor  of  death  already  on  her  face,  and  bidding  all 
around — "me,"  says  the  priest,  "and  the  others  who 
stood  by  " — to  recommend  her  to  Christ,  asked  that  the 
black  rood  should  be  brought  to  her.  This  Avas  the 
most  holy  of  all  the  relics  which  she  had  brought  with 
her  to  Scotland.  It  was  a  case  of  pure  gold  in  the  form 
of  a  cross,  ornamented  with  marvelous  work,  bearing  the 
image  of  the  Saviour  curiously  carved  in  ivory,  and  en- 
closing a  portion  of  the  true  cross  (proved  to  be  so  by 
many  miracles).  The  Queen  took  it  in  her  hands,  pressed 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  23 

it  to  her  dying  breast,  and  touched  with  it  her  eyes  and 
face.  While  thus  devoutly  employed,  with  her  thoughts 
diverted  from  all  earthly  things,  Margaret  was  brought 
back  to  her  sorrow  by  the  sudden  entrance  of  her  son 
Ethelred,  who  had  returned  from  the  defeated  army  to 
carry  to  his  mother  the  dreadful  news  of  the  death  not  only 
of  his  father  but  of  his  elder  brother.  The  sight  of  his 
mother  in  extremity,  almost  gone,  no  doubt  confused  the 
poor  boy,  still  little  more  than  a  stripling,  and  with  that 
weight  of  disaster  on  his  head — and  he  answered  to  her 
faltering  inquiry  at  first  that  all  was  well.  Margaret  ad- 
jured him  by  the  holy  cross  in  her  arms  to  tell  her  the 
truth  :  then  when  she  heard  of  the  double  blow,  burst 
out  in  an  impassioned  cry.  "  I  thank  Thee,  Lord,"  she 
said,  "that  givest  me  this  agony  to  bear  in  my  death 
hour."  Her  life  had  been  much  blessed  ;  she  had  known 
few  sorrows  ;  it  was  as  a  crown  to  that  pure  and  lovelit 
existence  that  she  had  this  moment  of  bitterest  anguish 
before  God  gave  to  His  beloved  sleep. 

While  this  sad  scene  was  enacting  within,  the  country 
was  full  of  tumult  and  conspiracy  without.  Donald 
Bane,  the  brother  of  Malcolm,  had  no  doubt  chafed  at  the 
Saxon  regime  under  which  the  King  had  fallen,  for  years- 
and  struggled  against  the  influences  brought  in  from 
abroad  in  the  retinue  of  the  foreigner,  as  has  been  done 
in  every  commonwealth  in  history  at  one  time  or  anoth-ei1. 
He  represented  the  old  world,  the  Celtic  rule.,  the  tra- 
ditions of  the  past.  Some  of  the  chroniclers  indeed  assert 
that  Malcolm  was  illegitimate  and  Donald  Bane  the  right- 
ful heir  to  the  crown.  He  was,  at  all  events,  a  pretender 
kept  in  subjection  while  Malcolm's  strong  hand  held  the 
scepter,  but  ready  to  seize  the  first  opportunity  of  revo- 
lution. No  doubt  the  news  of  the  King's  death,  and  of 
that  of  his  heir,  would  run  like  wildfire  through  the 
country  ;  but  it  would  seem  that  the  attempt  of  Donald 


24  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

must  have  been  already  organized,  since  his  siege  of 
Edinburgh,  where  most  of  his  brother's  children  were 
with  their  mother,  placed  there  for  safety  in  the  King's 
absence,  had  already  begun.  Upon  the  death  of  the 
Queen,  Donald  was  not  likely  to  have  treated  the  royal 
children  who  stood  in  his  way  with  much  mercy ;  and 
'the  state  of  affairs  was  desperate  when  young  Ethelred, 
the  third  of  her  sons,  not  yet  arrived  at  man's  estate, 
closed  his  mother's  eyes,  and  found  himself  at  the  head 
of  the  weeping  family  shut  up  within  the  castle,  sur- 
rounded by  precipices  on  every  side  except  that  upon 
which  his  angry  uncle  lay  with  all  the  forces  of  the  dis- 
contented in  Scotland  at  his  back,  all  the  lovers  of  the 
old  regime  and  enemies  of  the  stranger,  and  with  a  fierce 
contingent  from  Norway  to  support  his  Celtic  horde.  In 
the  simplicity  of  the  narrative  we  hear  not  a  word  of  the 
troubled  councils  which  n^st  have  been  held  while  the 
boy  prince  in  his  sorrow  and  the  sudden  dreadful  respon- 
sibility laid  on  his  young  shoulders  turned  to  such  wise 
advisers  as  might  have  followed  Margaret  into  the  strong- 
hold, and  took  thought  how  to  save  the  children  and 
carry  off  the  precious  remains  of  the  Queen.  The  ex- 
pedient to  which  they  had  recourse  was  one  which  their 
assailants  evidently  thought  impossible.  That  the  rock 
upon  which  Edinburgh  Castle  stands  should  have  been 
considered  inaccessible  by  practical  mountaineers  like 
the  followers  of  Donald  Bane  seems  curious  :  but  in  those 
days  the  art  of  climbing  for  pleasure  had  not  been  dis- 
covered, and  it  had  no  place  in  the  methods  of  warfare. 
It  seemed  enough  to  the  assailants  to  hold  the  gates  and 
the  summit  of  the  eastern  slopes,  where  probably  there 
must  already  have  been  some  clusters  of  huts  or  rough 
half -fortified  dwellings  descending  from  the  Castle  Hill, 
foreshadowing  a  Lawnmarket  at  least  if  not  yet  a  Canon- 
gate.  No  one  would  seem  to  have  thought  of  the  possi- 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  25 

bility  of  any  descent  on  the  other  side  from  that  perpen- 
dicular rock. 

But  despair  sharpens  the  wits,  and  no  doubt  after  many 
miserable  consultations  a  desperate  expedient  was  found. 
Even  now  nothing  but  a  goat,  or  a  schoolboy,  or  perhaps 
a  young  private  fearful  of  punishment,  could  find  a  way 
down  the  wonderful  curtain  of  rock  which  forms  the 
west  side  of  Edinburgh  Castle  ;  and  to  guide  the  children 
and  their  attendants,  a  sorrowful  little  group  of  mourn- 
ers, distracted  with  grief  and  fear,  and  Margaret's  body 
in  its  litter,  down  those  rocks  where  there  was  scarcely 
footing  for  an  alert  and  experienced  climber,  must  have 
been  one  of  the  most  difficult  as  it  was  one  of  the  boldest 
of  undertakings.  While  the  rebel  host  raged  on  the 
other  side,  and  any  traitor  might  have  brought  the  enemy 
round  to  intercept  that  slow  and  painful  descent,  it  was 
accomplished  safely  under  cover  of  "a  great  myst,'' 
Heaven,  as  all  thought,  helping  the  forlorn  fugitives  by 
that  natural  shield.  Mists  are  no  rare  things,  as  every- 
body knows,  on  these  heights.  Perhaps  it  was  the  well- 
known  easterly  haar,  the  veil  of  salt  sea  fog  which  Edin- 
burgh so  often  wraps  round  her  still,  which,  blowing  up 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Firth,  enveloped  the  travelers 
and  hid  them  in  its  folds  of  whiteness,  impenetrable  by 
the  closest  watcher,  till  they  had  safely  reached  the  level 
ground,  and  stealing  down  to  the  Queen's  Ferry  escaped 
to  loyal  Fife  and  their  home  in  Dunfermline.  Needless 
to  say  that  this  mist  was  a  miraculous  agency  to  all  the 
family  and  servants  of  the  Queen.  To  us  it  adds  a  touch 
of  local  color,  the  well-known  symbol  of  a  familiar  scene. 
Edinburgh  was  then  nothing  but  a  castle  upon  a  rock, 
and  now  is  one  of  the  fairest  and  most  celebrated  of  his- 
torical cities  ;  but  still  its  perpendicular  crags  rise  inac- 
cessible against  the  setting  sun,  and  still  the  white  mist 
comes  sweeping  up  from  the  sea. 


26  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  priests  that  this  is  the  only 
miracle  that  is  connected  with  the  name  of  Margaret,  if 
we  except  the  pretty  legend  which  tells  how  a  hundred 
years  later,  when  her  descendants  removed  the  remains  of 
the  saint  from  the  place  where  they  had  been  deposited  to 
lay  them  before  the  high  altar  in  Dunfermline,  the  coffin 
in  which  they  were  placed  could  not  be  carried  past  the 
humble  spot  in  which  lay,  brought  back  from  Northum- 
berland, the  bones  of  her  King.  The  cortege  stopped 
perforce,  the  ceremonial  had  to  be  interrupted,  1'or  all  the 
force  of  all  the  bearers  could  not  carry  even  in  death  the 
faithful  wife  from  her  husband  ;  and  the  only  thing  it 
was  found  that  could  be  done  was  to  transport  Malcolm 
along  with  the  partner  of  his  life  to  the  place  of  honor, 
to  which  on  his  own  account  that  rude  soldier  had  but 
little  claim.  Many  saints  have  had  whims  as  to  the 
place  of  their  interment,  and  showed  them  in  a  similar 
way,  but  this  is  all  sweetness  and  tender  fidelity  and 
worthy  to  be  true.  The  royal  pair  were  carried  off  after- 
wards, stolen  away  like  so  much  gold  or  silver,  by  Philip 
of  Spain  to  enrich  his  gloomy  mausoleum-palace,  and 
can  be  traced  for  a  long  time  in  one  place  or  another  re- 
ceiving that  strange  worship  which  attaches  to  the  most 
painful  relics  of  humanity.  But  where  they  now  lie,  if 
in  the  bosom  of  the  kindly  earth  or  among  other  dread- 
ful remains  in  some  sanctuary  filled  with  relics,  no  one 
knows. 

Margaret  had  done  in  her  lifetime  great  things  for 
Scotland.  She  had  introduced  comforts  and  luxuries  of 
every  kind,  and  the  decorative  arts,  and  a  great  deal  of 
actual  wealth,  into  a  very  poor  and  distracted  country. 
The  earliest  charter  which  is  found  in  the  Scottish 
archives  is  one  of  Malcolm  and  Margaret,  showing  how 
the  time  of  settlement  and  established  order  began  in 
their  reign.  She  had  helped  to  give  the  distracted  and 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  27 

divided  kingdom,  made  up  of  warring  sects,  that  consoli- 
dation and  steadiness  which  enabled  it  to  take  its  place 
among  recognized  nations.  She  turned  the  wavering 
balance  between  Celt  and  Saxon  to  what  has  proved  to  be 
the  winning  side,  the  side  of  progress  and  advancement. 
The  Donalds  and  Duncans  were,  swept  away  after  a  brief 
and  bloody  interval  and  were  no  more  possible  in  Scot- 
land after  her,  and  the  reign  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  was  as- 
sured. She  was  apparently  the  instrument  too,  though 
there  is  little  information  on  this  subject,  of  drawing  the 
Church  of  Scotland  into  that  close  union  with  Eome 
which  had  been  already  accomplished  in  England ;  a  step 
which,  if  it  lost  some  doubtful  freedom  and  independence 
in  ecclesiastical  matters,  secured  still  more  completely  a 
recognized  place  in  Catholic  Christendom  to  the  northern 
kingdom.  "The  pure  Culdee"  of  whom  we  know  so 
little  did  not  survive,  any  more  than  did  the  Celtic  kings, 
her  influence  and  the  transformation  she  effected.  Her 
life  and  legend  formed  the  stepping-stone  for  Scotland 
into  authentic  history  as  into  a  consolidated  and  inde- 
pendent existence.  The  veil  of  fable  and  uncertainty 
cleared  away  before  the  mild  shining  of  her  name  and 
story.  Like  Edinburgh  coming  suddenly  into  sight,  as 
in  some  old  and  primitive  picture,  high  upon  its  rock, 
with  the  slope  of  the  Castle  Hill  on  one  side  and  the 
precipices  round,  and  the  white  mist  sweeping  up  from 
the  sea,  Scotland  itself  becomes  recognizable  and  grows 
into  form  and  order  by  the  light  of  her  peaceful  and 
gracious  presence. 

And  it  is  something  worth  noting  that  this  image  of 
purity  and  excellence  was  no  monkish  vision  of  the  purity 
of  the  cloister,  but  that  more  complete  and  at  the  same 
time  more  humble  ideal  of  the  true  wife,  mother,  and 
mistress,  whose  work  was  in  and  for  the  world  an'l  the 
people,  not  withdrawn  to  any  exceptional  refuge  or  shelter 


28  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

— which  has  always  been  most  dear  to  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race.  The  influence  of  such  an  example  in  a  country 
where  manners  and  morals  were  equally  rudimentary, 
where  the  cloister  proved  often  the  only  refuge  for 
women,  and  even  that  not  always  a  safe  one — was  incal- 
culable, and  the  protection  of  a  virtuous  Court  something 
altogether  novel  and  admirable.  The  gentlewomen  who 
worked  at  their  tapestry  under  Margaret's  eye,  and  learned 
the  gentler  manners  of  other  Courts  and  countries  of  old 
civilization  by  her  side,  and  did  their  wooing  modestly 
with  the  sanction  of  her  approval,  must  have  changed 
the  atmosphere  of  the  north  in  the  most  wonderful  way 
and  quickened  every  current  of  national  development 
though  the  influence  was  remote  and  the  revolution  tiii- 
perceived.  The  chroniclers  go  back  with  a  fond  persis- 
tence to  the  story  of  Margaret  and  her  sons,  and  the 
number  of  her  family  and  the  circumstances  of  her  mar- 
riage and  of  her  death.  Before  her  there  is  little  but 
fable  ;  after  her  the  stream  of  history  flows  clear.  The 
story  of  Macbeth,  which  is,  yet  is  not,  the  Shakspearian 
drama,  and  accordingly  takes  quite  a  curious  distinct  flow 
of  its  own,  like  a  new  and  imperfect  version  of  something 
already  familiarly  known,  is  the  only  episode  of  secular 
history  that  has  any  reality  before  we  come,  in  the  next 
generation,  to  herself  and  her  King.  The  earlier  annals 
of  Adamnau,  the  life  of  Columba  and  the  records  of  his 
sacred  isle,  belong  to  those  ever-living  ever-continuing 
legends  of  the  saints  in  which  the  story  of  the  nations 
counts  for  little.  But  Margaret  was  fortunately  secular, 
and  though  a  saint,  a  great  and  influential  personage  in 
the  front  of  everything,  and  also  a  woman  in  the  fullest 
tide  of  life  to  whom  all  human  events  were  happening  ; 
who  lived  by  love  and  died  of  grief,  and  reigned  and 
vejoiced  and  triumphed  as  well  as  suffered  and  prayed. 
There  followed,  however,  a  terrible  moment  for  that 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  29 

new  .Scottish-Saxon  royal  family,  when  both  their  parents 
were  thus  taken  from  them.  Donald  Bane  set  up  a  brief 
authority,  restoring  the  old  kingdom  and  banishing, 
after  the  familiar  use  and  wont  of  such  revolutions,  his 
brother's  children  from  Scotland.  Of  these  children, 
however,  but  three  sons  are  mentioned  :  Edgar,  Alexan- 
der, and  David,  who  must  all  have  been  under  age  at  the 
time.  Ethelred,  who  had  the  dangerous  office  of  convey- 
ing his  brothers  and  sisters  along  with  his  mother's  body 
to  Dunfermline,  died  or  was  killed  immediately  after  this 
feat,  and  was  laid  with  the  King  and  Queen  before  the 
rood  altar  in  Dunfermline  ;  and  of  Edmund,  an  elder  son, 
we  have  but  a  confused  account,  Wynton  and  Fordun 
both  describing  him  as  "  a  man  of  gret  wertu  "  who  died 
in  religion,  having  taken  the  cowl  of  a  monk  of  Cluny ; 
whereas  William  of  Malmesbury  accuses  him  of  treachery 
and  complicity  in  the  murder  of  his  base-born  brother 
Duncan.  However  this  might  be,  he  was  at  least  swept 
from  the  succession,  in  which  there  is  no  mention  of  him. 
Malcolm's  lawful  heirs  were  thus  reduced  to  the  three 
boys  whom  their  uncle,  Edgar  Atheling,  had  received  in 
England.  But  Donald  Bane  was  not  long  permitted  to 
enjoy  his  conquest  in  peace.  Duncan,  the  illegitimate 
son  (but  this  counted  for  little  in  those  days)  of  Malcolm, 
who  was  a  hostage  in  England,  after  his  uncle  had  held 
the  sovereign  power  for  six  months,  made  a  rush  upon 
Scotland  with  the  help  of  an  English  army,  and  overcame 
and  displaced  Donald  ;  but  in  his  turn  was  overcome 
after  a  reign  of  a  year  and  a  half,  Donald  Bane  again 
resuming  the  power,  which  he  held  for  three  }Tears  more. 
By  this  time  young  Edgar,  Margaret's  son,  had  come  to 
man's  estate,  and  with  the  help  of  the  faithful  Saxons 
who  still  adhered  to  his  uncle,  Edgar  Atheling,  and  en- 
couraged by  dreams  and  revelations  that  the  crown  was 
to  be  his,  came  back  to  Scotland  and  succeeded  finally  in 


30  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

overcoming  Donald  and  securing  his  inheritance.  The 
period  of  anarchy  and  trouble  lasted  for  five  years,  and  no 
doubt  the  civilization  and  good  order  which  Malcolm  and 
Margaret  had  toiled  to  establish  were  for  the  moment 
much  disturbed.  But  after  Edgar's  succession  the  inter- 
rupted progress  was  resumed.  "He  was  a  man  of  faire 
havyng,"  says  old  Wynton,  and  in  his  time  the  Saxon 
race  came  again  to  great  honor  and  promotion,  at  once 
by  his  own  firm  establishment  upon  the  Scottish  throne, 
and  by  the  marriage  of  his  sister  Maud  to  the  new  King 
of  England,  Henry  I.,  which  restored  the  Saxon  succes- 
sion and  united  right  to  might  in  England.  Thus  after 
a  moment  of  darkness  and  downfall  the  seed  of  the  right- 
eous took  root  again  and  prospered,  and  the  children 
of  St.  Margaret  occupied  both  thrones.  Edgar,  like  so 
many  of  his  race,  died  childless ;  but  he  was  peacefully 
succeeded  by  his  brother  Alexander,  who,  though  as  much 
devoted  to  church-building  and  good  works  as  the  rest  of 
his  family,  was  apparently  a  more  warlike  personage, 
since  he  was  called  Alexander  the  Fierce,  an  alarming 
title,  and  was  apparently  most  prompt  and  thoroughgoing 
in  crushing  rebellion  and  other  little  incidents  of  the  age. 
He  was  succeeded  in  his  turn  by  the  youngest  of  Marga- 
ret's sons,  David,  that  "  sair  sanct  for  the  crown/'  who 
covered  Scotland  with  ecclesiastical  foundations. 

"  He  illumynyd  in  his  dayes 
His  landys  wyth  kirkis  and  abbayis  ; 
Bishoprychs  he  fand  bot  foure  or  three, 
Bot  or  he  deyd  nyne  left  he." 

Among  the  many  other  foundations  made  by  King 
David  was  the  house  of  the  Holy  Rood  which  has  been  so 
familiar  a  name  in  Scottish  history — built  low  in  the 
valley  at  the  foot  of  the  surrounding  hills  and  that  castle 
in  which  the  Queen  died  pressing  the  black  rood — most 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  ?,1 

precious  possession — to  her  dying  breast.  Whether  a 
recollection  of  that  scene,  which  might  well  have  im- 
pressed itself  even  on  the  memory  of  a  child,  and  of  the 
strange  wild  funeral  procession,  with  all  its  associations 
of  grief  and  terror,  which  had  stumbled  down  the  danger- 
ous rocks  in  the  mist  thirty-five  years  before,  was  in 
David's  mind,  it  would  be  vain  to  inquire.  The  black 
rood  of  itself,  besides  these  touching  and  sacred  associa- 
tions, was  a  relic  of  almost  unequalled  sanctity,  and  well 
warranted  the  erection  of  a  holy  house  for  its  guardian- 
ship and  preservation.  How  far  the  street,  which  would 
be  little  more  than  a  collection  of  huts,  had  crept  down 
the  Castle  Hill  towards  the  new  monastery  in  the  valley 
there  is  no  evidence  to  show,  but  no  doubt  both  the  castle 
and  the  religious  house  were  soon  surrounded  by  those 
humble  scattered  dwellings,  and  David's  charter  itself 
makes  it  plain  that  already  the  borough  of  Edinburgh 
was  of  some  importance.  Part  of  the  revenues  of  the 
monastery  were  to  be  derived  from  the  dues  and  taxes  of 
the  town,  and  it  was  also  endowed  with  "one  half  of  the 
tallow,  lard,  and  hides  of  the  beasts  slain  in  Edinburgh," 
an  unsavory  but  no  doubt  valuable  gift.  The  canons  of 
the  Abbey  of  Holyrood,  or  Ilolyrood  House  as  it  is  called 
from  the  beginning  with  a  curious  particularity,  had  also 
permission  to  build  another  town  between  themselves 
and  Edinburgh,  which  would  naturally  cluster  round  the 
Canon's  Gate — the  road  that  led  to  St.  Cuthbert's  at  the 
farther  end  of  the  North  Loch,  where  every  man  could  say 
his  mass  ;  or  more  directly  still  to  the  dark  little  chapel 
upon  the  castle  rock,  made  sacred  by  all  its  memorials  of 
the  blessed  Margaret.  The  nucleus  of  the  future  capital 
is  thus  plainly  apparent  between  the  two  great  forces  of 
that  age,  the  Church,  the  great  instrument  of  congrega- 
tion and  civilization,  and  the  Stronghold,  in  which  at  any 
moment  of  danger  refuge  could  be  taken.  It  is  curious 


32  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

to  realize  the  wild  solitude  of  this  historical  ridge,  with 
its  rude  houses  coining  into  being  one  by  one,  the  low 
thatched  roofs  and  wattled  walls  which  in  the  course  of 
time  were  to  give  place  to  buildings  so  stately.  The 
Canongate  would  be  but  a  country  road  leading  up 
towards  the  strong  and  gloomy  gate  which  gave  entrance 
to  the  enceinte  of  the  castle — itself  like  some  eagle's  nest 
perched  high  among  the  clouds. 

The  line  of  Margaret  went  on  till  her  sons  held  their 
Courts  and  dated  their  charters  from  Holyrood  House, 
and  Parliaments  were  held  and  laws  made  in  the  Castle  of 
Edinburgh,  and  the  scattered  huts  upon  the  Castle  Hill 
had  grown  into  a  metropolis.  They  were  a  pious  and  in 
many  respects  an  enlightened  race,  and  they  came  to 
great  honor  and  renown  on  both  sides  of  the  house. 
Maud,  Margaret's  daughter,  became  Queen  of  England, 
and  her  granddaughter  Empress,  while  Scotland  devel- 
oped and  nourished  in  the  hands  of  the  saintly  Queen's 
sons  and  their  descendants.  There  are  unfortunate  indi- 
viduals in  the  most  prosperous  races,  and  Scotland  never 
sustained  greater  humiliation  than  in  her  attempts  to 
rescue  William  called  the  Lion,  a  sorry  lion  for  his  king- 
dom, when  he  allowed  himself  to  be  caught  in  a  trap  and 
made  the  prisoner  of  the  English  king.  But  the  children 
of  Malcolm  and  Margaret  retained  their  character  through 
many  generations,  and  were  a  Godfearing  house,  full  of 
faith  and  devotion,  careful  of  their  people's  interests,  and 
dear  to  their  hearts.  They  prospered  as  the  virtuous  and 
excellent  so  often  do  even  in  this  world,  and  covered 
Scotland  with  endowments — endowments  which  indeed 
proved  a  snare  to  the  church  on  after  occasions,  but  which 
at  that  period  were  probably  the  best  means  in  which 
money  could  be  invested  for  the  benefit  of  the  people, 
since  alms  and  succor  and  help  and  teaching  in  every  way 
came  from  the  monks  in  the  primitive  circumstances  of 


MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND.  33 

all  nations.  They  were  not  only  the  guardians  of  learn- 
ing ;  they  were  examples  in  husbandry,  in  building,  in 
every  necessary  craft ;  nursing  the  sick,  receiving  the 
stranger,  and,  as  the  very  title  deed  of  their  existence, 
feeding  the  poor.  In  those  uncomplicated  times  there 
was  no  such  fear  of  pauperizing  the  natives  of  the  soil 
as  holds  our  hands  now,  and  everything  had  to  be  taught 
to  the  primitive  laborer,  who  might  have  to  leave  the 
plow  in  the  middle  of  the  furrow  and  be  off  and  away  on 
his  lord's  commands  at  any  moment,  leaving  his  wife 
and  children  to  struggle  on  with  the  help  of  the  good 
fathers  who  taught  the  boys,  or  the  gentle  sisters  who 
trained  the  girls  to  more  delicate  work,  feeding  the  widow 
and  her  brood.  David  and  his  brothers,  and  the  devout 
kings  who  immediately  followed,  probably  did  what  was 
best  for  their  agitated  kingdom  in  establishing  so  many 
centers  of  assured  and  quiet  living,  succor  and  peace, 
even  if  what  was  salvation  for  their  age  became  the 
danger  of  another  time.  Those  foundations  continued 
through  the  whole  of  the  period  during  which  the  lineal 
descendants  of  Margaret  held  the  throne.  Her  lineage, 
it  is  true,  has  never  died  out  :  but  the  strain  changed 
with  the  death  of  the  last  Alexander,  and  another  change 
came  over  Scotland  not  so  profound  as  that  which  attended 
the  coming  of  the  Saxon  princess,  yet  great  and  remark- 
able— the  end  of  an  age  of  construction,  of  establishment, 
of  knitting  together  ;  the  beginning  of  a  time  disturbed 
with  other  questions,  with  complications,  of  advancing 
civilization,  nobles  and  burghers,  trade  and  war. 
3 


PART  II. 

THE  STEWARDS  OF  SCOTLAND. 

CHAPTEE  I. 

JAMES  I.   POET  AXD  LEGISLATOK. 

THE  growth  of  Edinburgh  is  difficult  to  trace  tnrough 
the  mists  and  the  tumults  of  the  ages.  The  perpetual 
fighting  which  envelops  the  Scotland  of  those  days  as  in 
the  '"'  great  stour  "  or  dust,  which  was  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
conception  of  a  battle,  with  gleams  of  swords  and  flashes 
of  fire  breaking  through,  offers  few  breaks  through  which 
we  can  see  anything  like  the  tranquil  growth  of  that  civic 
life  which  requires  something  of  a  steady  and  settled 
order  and  authority  to  give  it  being.  The  revolutions 
which  took  place  in  the  country  brought  perpetual  vicis- 
situde to  the  Castle  of  Edinburgh,  and  no  doubt  destroyed 
and  drove  from  their  nests  upon  the  eastern  slopes  of  the 
rock  the  settlers  who  again  and  again  essayed  to  keep 
their  footing  there.  When  the  family  of  St.  Margaret 
came  to  a  conclusion,  and  the  great  historical  struggle 
which  succeeded  ended  in  the  establishment  of  Kobert 
Bruce  upon  the  throne,  that  great  victor  and  statesman 
destroyed  the  Castle  of  Edinburgh  with  other  strong- 
holds, that  it  might  not  afford  a  point  of  vantage  to  the 
English  invader  or  other  enemies  of  the  country's  peace 
— a  step  which  would  seem  to  have  been  premature, 
though  probably,  in  the  great  triumph  and  ascendency, 
34 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  35 

in  Scotland  which  his  noble  character  and  work  had 
gained,  he  might  have  hoped  that  at  least  the  unanimity  of 
the  nation  and  its  internal  peace  were  secured,  and  that  only 
an  enemy  would  attempt  to  dominate  the  reconciled  and 
united  country.  The  Castle  was,  however,  built  up  again 
and  again,  reestablished  and  destroyed,  a  center  of  end- 
less fighting  during  the  tumultuous  reigns  that  followed, 
though  it  is  only  on  the  accession  of  a  new  race,  a  family 
so  deeply  connected  with  the  modern  history  of  Great 
Britain  that  no  reader  can  be  indifferent  to  its  early  ap- 
pearances, that  Edinburgh  begins  to  become  visible  as 
the  center  of  government,  the  royal  residence  from 
whence  laws  were  issued,  and  where  the  business  of  the 
nation  was  carried  on.  Following  what  seems  to  be  one 
of  the  most  wonderful  rules  of  heredity — a  peculiarity 
considerably  opposed  to  the  views  which  have  been  re- 
cently current  on  that  subject — Kobert  Bruce  was  too 
great  a  man  to  have  a  son  worthy  of  him  :  and  after  the 
trifling  and  treacherous  David  the  inheritance  of  his  king- 
dom came  through  his  daughter  to  a  family  already 
holding  a  high  place — the  Stewards  of  Scotland,  great 
hereditary  officials,  though  scarcely  so  distinguished  in 
character  as  in  position.  The  tradition  that  their  ancestor 
Banquo  was  the  companion  of  Macbeth  when  the  proph- 
ecy was  made  to  him  which  had  so  great  an  effect  upon 
that  chieftain's  career,  and  that  to  Banquo's  descendants 
was  adjudged  the  crown  which  Macbeth  had  no  child  to 
inherit,  is  far  better  known,  thanks  to  Shakspeare,  than 
any  fact  of  their  early  history.  It  is  probably  another 
instance  of  that  inventive  ingenuity  of  the  original 
chroniclers,  which  so  cleverly  imagined  a  whole  line  of 
fabulous  kings,  to  give  dignity  and  importance  to  the 
"  ancient  kingdom "  thus  carried  back  to  inarticulate 
prehistoric  ages.  In  this  way  the  Stewarts,  actually  a 
branch  of  a  well-known  Norman  family,  were  linked  to  a 


36  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

poetic  and  visionary  past  by  their  supposed  identification 
with  the  children  of  Banquo,  with  all  the  circumstantial 
details  of  an  elaborate  pedigree.  According  to  the 
legend,  the  dignity  of  Grand  Steward  of  Scotland  was 
conferred  by  Malcolm  Canmore  upon  a  descendant  of 
the  ancient  thane,  and  the  lineage  of  the  family  is  traced 
through,  all  the  dim  intervening  ages  with  scrupulous 
minuteness.  The  title  of  Steward  of  Scotland  was 
enough,  it  would  seem,  to  make  other  lordships  un- 
necessary, and  gradually  developed  into  that  family  sur- 
name Avith  which  we  are  now  so  familiar,  which  has 
wrought  both  Scotland  and  England  so  much  woe,  yet 
added  so  intense  an  interest  to  many  chapters  of  national 
history.  The  early  Stewards  are  present  by  name  in  all 
the  great  national  events  :  but  have  left  little  characteristic 
trace  upon  the  records,  as  of  remarkable  individuals. 
They  took  the  cross  in  repeated  crusades,  carrying  their 
official  coat  with  its  checkers,  the  brand  of  the  Chief 
Servitor  of  the  Scottish  Court,  through  the  wars  of  the 
Holy  Land,  till  they  came  finally  into  the  highest  favor 
and  splendor  in  the  days  of  Bruce,  whose  cause,  which 
was  also  the  cause  of  the  independence  of  Scotland,  they 
maintained.  Walter,  who  then  held  the  office  of  Steward, 
was  knighted  on  the  field  of  Bannockburn.  He  was  after- 
wards, as  the  story  goes,  sent  to  receive  on  the  Border, 
after  peace  had  been  made,  various  prisoners  who  had 
been  detained  in  England  during  the  war,  and  among 
them  Marjory  Bruce,  the  daughter  of  the  patriot-king. 
It  would  be  easy  to  imagine  the  romance  that  followed  : 
the  young  knight  reverently  escorting  the  young  princess 
across  the  devastated  country,  which  had  not  yet  had 
time  to  recover  its  cruel  wounds,  but  yet  was  all  astir  with 
satisfaction  and  hope  :  and  how  his  account  of  what  had 
happened  in  Scotland,  and,  above  all,  of  that  memorable 
field  where  he  had  won  from  the  Bruce's  own  famous 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  37 

sword  the  touch  of  knighthood,  would  stir  the  maiden's 
heart.  A  brave  young  soldier  with  great  hereditary  pos- 
sessions, and  holding  so  illustrious  an  office,  there  was  no 
reason  why  he  should  despair,  however  high-placed  his 
affections  might  be.  It  takes  a  little  from  the  romance  to 
be  obliged  to  acknowledge  that  he  was  already  a  widower  ; 
but  marriages  were  early  and  oft-repeated  in  those  days, 
and  when  Marjory  Bruce  died  her  husband  was  still  only 
about  twenty-three.  It  was  thus  that  the  crown  came  to 
the  family  of  the  Stewards  of  Scotland,  the  Stewarts  of 
modern  times  :  coming  with  a  "lass"  as  her  descendant 
said  long  afterwards,  and  likely  to  "  go  with  a  lass"  when 
it  was  left  to  the  infant  Mary  :  though  this  last,  with  all 
her  misfortunes,  was  the  instrument  not  of  destruction 
but  transformation,  and  transferred,  that  crown  to  a  more 
splendid  and  enlarged  dominion. 

It  was  in  the  reign  of  Marjory's  son,  the  grandson  and 
namesake  of  the  Bruce,  and  of  his  successors,  that  Edin- 
burgh began  to  be  of  importance  in  the  country,  slowly 
becoming  visible  by  means  of  charters  and  privileges,  and 
soon  by  records  of  Parliaments,  laws  made,  and  public 
acts  proceeding  from  the  growing  city.  Robert  Bruce, 
though  he  had  destroyed  the  castle,  granted  certain 
liberties  and  aids  to  the  burghers,  both  in  repression  and 
in  favor  pursuing  the  same  idea,  with  an  evident  desire  to 
substitute  the  peaceful  progress  of  the  town  for  the  dan- 
gerous domination  of  the  fortress.  Between  that  period 
and  the  reign  of  the  second  Stewart,  King  Eobert  III.,  the 
castle  had  already  been  re-erected  and  re-destroyed  more 
than  once.  Its  occupation  by  the  English  seemed  the  chief 
thing  dreaded  by  the  Scots,  and  it  was  again  and  again  by 
English  hands  that  the  fortifications  were  restored — such 
a  stronghold  and  point  of  defense  being  evidently  of  the 
first  importance  to  invaders,  while  much  less  valuable  as 
a  means  of  defense.  In  the  year  1385  the  walls  must  have 


38  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

encircled  a  large  area  uppn  the  summit  of  the  rock,  the 
enceinte  probably  widening,  as  the  arts  of  architecture 
and  fortification  progressed,  from  the  strong  and  grim 
eyrie  on  the  edge  of  the  precipice  to  the  wide  and  noble 
enclosure,  with  room  for  a  palace  as  well  as  a  fortress, 
into  which  the  great  castles  of  England  were  growing. 
The  last  erection  of  these  ofteri-cast-down  walls  was  made 
by  Edward  III.  on  his  raid  into  Scotland,  and  probably 
the  royal  founder  of  Windsor  Castle  had  given  to  the  en- 
closure an  amplitude  unknown  before.  The  Scots  king 
most  likely  had  neither  the  money  nor  the  habits  which 
made  a  great  royal  residence  desirable,  especially  in  a 
spot  so  easily  isolated  and  so  open  to  attack  ;  but  he  gave 
a  charter  to  his  burghers  of  Edinburgh  authorizing  them 
to  build  houses  within  tho  castle  walls,  and  to  pass  in  and 
out  freely  without  toll  or  due — a  curious  privilege,  which 
must  have  made  the  castle  a  sort  of  imperium  in  imperio, 
a  town  within  a  town.  The  little  closets  of  rooms  which 
in  a  much  later  and  more  luxurious  age  must  have  sufficed 
for  the  royal  personages  whom  fate  drove  into  Edinburgh 
Castle  as  a  residence,  are  enough  to  show  how  limited 
were  the  requirements  in  point  of  space  of  the  royal  Scots. 
The  room  in  which  James  VI.  of  Scotland  was  born  would 
scarcely  be  occupied,  save  under  protest,  by  a  housemaid 
in  our  days.  But  indeed  the  Castle  of  Edinburgh  was 
neither  adapted  nor  intended  for  a  royal  residence.  The 
abbey  in  the  valley,  from  which  the  King  could  retire  on 
receipt  of  evil  tidings,  where  the  winds  were  hushed  and 
the  air  less  keen,  and  gardens  and  pleasant  hillsides 
accessible,  and  all  the  splendor  of  religious  ceremonies 
within  reach,  afforded  more  fit  and  secure  surroundings 
even  for  a  primitive  court.  The  Parliament  met,  how- 
ever, within  the  fortress,  and  the  courts  of  justice  would 
seem  to  have  been  held  within  reach  of  its  shelter.  And 
thither  the  burghers  carried  their  wealth,  and  built  among 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  39 

the  remains  of  the  low  huts  of  ^n  earlier  age  their  straight 
steep  houses,  with  high  pitched  roofs  tiled  with  slabs  of 
stone,  rising  gray  and  strong  within  the  enceinte,  almost 
as  strong  and  apt  to  resisi  whatever  missiles  were  possible 
as  the  walls  themselves,  standing  out  with  straight  defiant 
gables  against  the  northern  blue. 

King  Eobert  III.  was  a  feeble,  sickly,  and  poor-spirited 
king,  and  he  had  a  prodigal  son  of  that  gay,  brilliant,  at- 
tractive, and  impracticable  kind  which  is  so  well  known 
in  fiction  and  romance,  and,  alas  !  also  so  familiar  in  com- 
mon life.  David,  Duke  of  Eothesay,  was  the  first  in  the 
Scotch  records  who  was  ever  raised  to  that  rank — nothing 
above  the  degree  of  Earl  having  been  known  in  the  north 
before  the  son  and  brother  of  the  King,  the  latter  by  the 
fatal  title  of  Albany,  brought  a  new  degree  into  the  roll 
of  nobility.  Young  David,  all  unknowing  of  the  tragic 
fate  before  him,  was  then  a  daring  and  reckless  youth, 
held  within  bounds,  as  would  appear,  by  the  influence  of 
a  good  and  wise  mother,  and  if  an  anxiety  and  trouble,  at 
least  as  yet  no  disgrace  to  the  throne.  He  was  the  con- 
temporary of  another  madcap  prince,  far  better  known  to 
us,  of  whose  pranks  we  are  all  more  than  indulgent,  and 
whose  name  has  the  attraction  of  youth  and  wit  and  free- 
dom and  boundless  humor  to  the  reader  still.  David  of 
Scotland  has  had  no  one  to  celebrate  his  youthful  adven- 
tures like  him  whose  large  and  splendid  touch  has  made 
Prince  Hal  *  so  fine  a  representative  of  all  that  is  careless 
and  gay  in  prodigal  youth,  with  its  noble  qualities  but 
half  in  abeyance,  and  abounding  spirit  and  humor  and 
reckless  fancy  making  its  course  of  wild  adventure  com- 
prehensible even  to  the  gravest.  Perhaps  the  license  of 

*  We  here  take  Shakspeare's  Prince  Hal  for  granted,  as  we 
feel  disposed  at  all  times  to  take  the  poet's  word  in  defiance  of 
history  ;  though  no  doubt  the  historical  argument  is  calculated 
to  throw  a  chill  of  doubt  upon  that  gay  and  brilliant  image. 


40  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

the  Stewart  blood  carried  the  hapless  northern  prince 
into  more  dangerous  adventures  than  the  wild  fun  of 
Gadshill  and  Eastcheap.  And  Prince  David's  future  had 
already  been  compromised  by  certain  sordid  treacheries 
about  his  marriage  when  he  first  appears  in  history,  with- 
out the  force  of  character  which  changed  Prince  Hal  into 
a  conquering  leader  and  strong  sovereign,  but  with  all  the 
chivalrous  instincts  of  a  young  knight.  He  had  been  ap- 
pointed at  a  very  early  age  Lieutenant  of  the  Kingdom 
to  replace  his  father,  it  being  "  well  seen  and  kenned  that 
our  lorde  the  Kyng  for  sickness  of  his  person  may  not 
travail  to  govern  the  realm,"  with  full  provision  of  coun- 
selors for  his  help  and  guidance  ;  which  argues  a  certain 
confidence  in  his  powers.  But  the  cares  of  internal  gov- 
ernment were  at  this  point  interrupted  by  the  more  urgent 
necessity  of  repelling  an  invasion,  a  danger  not  unusual, 
yet  naturally  of  an  exciting  kind. 

On  this  occasion  the  invader  was  Henry  IV.  of  England, 
the  father  of  the  other  prodigal,  whose  object  is  some- 
what perplexing,  and  differs  much  from  the  usual  raid  to 
which  the  Scots  were  so  well  accustomed.  So  far  as  ap- 
pears from  all  the  authorities,  his  invasion  was  a  sort  of 
promenade  of  defiance  or  bravado,  though  it  seems  unlike 
the  character  of  that  astute  prince  to  have  undertaken  so 
gratuitous  a  demonstration.  He  penetrated  as  far  as 
Leith,  and  lay  there  for  some  time  threatening,  or  appear- 
ing to  threaten,  Edinburgh  Castle;  but  all  that  he  seems 
to  have  done  was  to  make  proclamation  by  his  knights 
and  heralds  in  every  town  they  passed  through,  of  the  old, 
always  renewed,  claim  of  allegiance  to  the  English  crown 
which  every  generation  of  Scots  had  so  strenuously  and 
passionately  resisted.  The  fact  that  he  was  allowed  to 
penetrate  so  far  unmolested  is  as  remarkable  as  that  the 
invasion  was  an  entirely  peaceful  one  and  harmed  nobody. 
When  Henry  pitched  his  camp  at  Leith,  Albany  was  with- 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  41 

in  reach  with  what  is  called  a  great  army,  but  did  not  ad- 
vance a  step  to  meet  the  invader — in  face  of  whom,  how- 
ever, young  David  of  Rothesay,  and  with  him  many  po- 
tent personages,  retired  into  Edinburgh  Castle  with  every 
appearance  of  expecting  a  siege  there.  But  when  no 
sign  of  any  such  intention  appeared  or  warlike  moveinent 
of  any  kind,  nothing  but  the  gleam  of  Henry's  spears, 
stationary  clay  by  day  in  the  same  place,  and  a  strange 
tranquillity,  which  must  have  encouraged  every  kind  of 
wondering  rumor  and  alarm,  the  young  Prince  launched 
forth  a  challenge  to  the  English  king  and  host  to  meet 
him  in  person  with  two  or  three  hundred  knights  on  each 
side,  and  so  to  settle  the  question  between  them  and  save 
the  spilling  of  Christian  blood.  Henry,  it  is  said,  replied 
with  something  of  the  sarcasm  of  a  grave  and  middle-aged 
man  to  the  hasty  youth,  regretting  that  Prince  David 
should  consider  noble  blood  as  less  than  Christian  since 
he  desired  the  effusion  of  one  and  not  the  other.  The 
position  of  the  young  man  shut  up  within  the  walls  of  the 
fortress  in  enforced  inactivity  while  the  hated  Leopards 
of  England  fluttered  in  the  fresh  breezes  from  the  Firth, 
and  Henry's  multitudinous  tents  shone  in  the  northern 
sun — an  army  too  great  to  be  encountered  by  his  garrison 
and  noble  attendants  alone — while  dark  treason  and  evil 
intent  in  the  person  of  Albany  kept  the  army  of  Scotland 
inactive  though  within  reach,  was  one  to  justify  any  such 
outbreak  of  impatience.  David  must  have  felt  that  should 
the  invader  press,  there  was  little  help  to  be  expected 
from  his  uncle,  and  that  he  and  his  faction" would  look 
on  not  without  pleasure  to  see  the  castle  fall  and  the  heir 
of  Scotland  taken  or  slain.  But  King  Henry's  object  or 
meaning  is  more  difficult  to  divine.  Save  for  his  pro- 
clamations, and  the  quite  futile  summons  to  King  Robert 
to  do  homage,  he  seems  to  have  attempted  nothing  against 
the  country  through  which  he  was  thus  permitted  to 


42  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

march  unmolested.  The  little  party  of  knights  with 
their  attendant  squires  and  heralds  riding  to  every  market- 
cross  upon  the  way,  proclaiming  to  the  astonished  bur- 
ghers or  angry  village  folk  the  invader's  manifesto, 
scarcely  staying  long  enough  to  hear  the  fierce  murmurs 
that  arose — a  passing  pageant,  a  momentary  excitement 
and  no  more — was  a  sort  of  defiant  embassage  which  might 
have  pleased  the  fancy  of  a  young  adventurer,  but  scarcely 
of  a  king  so  wary  and  experienced  ;  and  his  own  stay  in 
the  midst  of  the  startled  country  is  still  more  inexplicable. 
When  the  monks  of  Holyrood  sent  a  mission  to  him  to 
beg  his  protection,  lying  undefended  as  they  did  in  the 
plain,  his  answer  to  them  was  curiously  apologetic.  "  Far 
be  it  from  me,"  he  said,  "to  be  so  inhuman  as  to  harm 
any  holy  house,  especially  Holyrood  in  which  my  father 
found  a  safe  refuge.  ...  I  am  myself  half  Scotch  by  the 
blood  of  the  Comyns,"  added  the  invader.  The  account 
which  Boece  gives  of  the  expedition  altogether  is  amusing, 
and  strictly  in  accord  with  all  that  is  said  by  other  his- 
torians, though  they  may  not  take  the  same  amiable  view. 
I  quote  from  the  quaint  translation  of  Bellenden. 

"  A  schort  time  efter  King  Harry  came  in  Scotland  with  an 
army.  Hovvbeit  he  did  small  injury  to  the  people  thairof,  for 
he  desirit  nowt  but  his  banner  to  be  erected  on  their  walls. 
Alwayis  he  was  ane  plesand  enneme,  and  did  gret  humaniteis 
to  the  people  in  all  places  of  Scotland  where  he  was  lodgit. 
Finally  he  showed  to  the  lords  of  Scotland  that  he  come  in  their 
rialm  more  by  counsel  of  his  nobles  than  ony  hatred  that  he 
bore  to  Scottes.  Soon  efter  he  returnit  without  any  further  in- 
jure in  England." 

It  is  very  seldom  that  a  Scotch  historian  is  able  to  des- 
ignate an  English  invader  as  "a  pleasant  enemy,"  and 
whether  there  was  some  scheme  which  came  to  nothing 
under  this  remarkable  and  harmless  raid,  or  whether  it 
was  only  the  carrying  out  of  Henry's  own  policy  "  to  busy 
giddy  minds  with  foreign  quarrels  " 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  43 

'  Lest  rest  and  lying  still  might  make  them  look 
Too  near  unto  my  state," 

it  is  difficult  to  say.  The  nobles  pent  up  in  Edinburgh 
Castle  with  the  hot-headed  young  Prince  at  their  head 
did  not  know  what  to  make  of  the  pleasant  enemy.  The 
alarm  he  had  caused,  compelling  their  own  withdrawal 
into  the  stronghold,  wrath  at  the  mere  sight  of  him  there 
in  the  heart  of  Scotland,  the  humiliating  inaction  in  which 
they  were  kept  by  a  foe  which  neither  attacked  nor  with- 
drew, must  have  so  chafed  the  Prince  and  his  companions 
that  the  challenge  thrown  forth  like  a  bugle  from  the 
heights  to  break  this  oppressive  silence  and  bring  about 
the  lingering  crisis  one  way  or  another  must  have  been  a 
relief  to  their  excitement  if  nothing  else.  One  of  the 
bewildered  reasons  alleged  for  the  invasion  is  that  young 
David  had  written  letters  to  France  in  which  he  called 
Bolingbroke  a  traitor — letters  which  had  fallen  into 
Henry's  hands  ;  but  this  is  as  unlikely  to  have  brought 
about  the  invasion  as  any  other  frivolous  cause,  though 
no  doubt  it  might  make  the  young  Prince  still  more  eager 
to  take  upon  himself  the  settling  of  the  quarrel.  We 
have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any  foreboding  of  his  fate 
had  crossed  the  mind  of  the  youth  at  this  period  of  his 
career,  yet  to  watch  the  army  of  England  lying  below, 
and  to  know  his  uncle  Albany  close  at  hand,  and  to  feel 
himself  incapable — with  nothing  but  a  limited  garrison  at 
his  command  and  no  doubt  the  wise  Douglas  and  the 
other  great  noblemen  holding  him  back — of  meeting  the 
invader  except  by  some  such  fantastic  chivalrous  expe- 
dient, must  have  been  hard  enough. 

And  how  strange  is  the  scene,  little  in  accordance  with 
the  habits  and  traditions  of  either  country  :  the  English 
camp  all  quiet  below,  as  if  on  a  holiday  expedition,  the 
Scots  looking  on  in  uneasy  expectation,  not  knowing 
what  the  next  moment  might  bring.  The  excitement 


4^  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

must  have  grown  greater  from  day  to  day  within  and  with- 
out, while  all  the  inhabitants,  both  citizens  and  garrison, 
kept  anxious  watch  to  detect  the  first  sign  of  the  enemy's 
advance.  Henry,  we  are  told,  was  called  away  to  oppose 
a  rising  in  Wales ;  not  indeed  that  rising  which  we  all 
know  so  well  in  which  Prince  Hal,  more  fortunate  than 
his  brother  prodigal,  had  the  means  of  showing  what  was 
in  him  ;  but  even  the  suggestion  approaches  once  more 
strangely  and  suggestively  the  names  of  the  two  heirs 
whose  fate  was  so  different — the  one  almost  within  sight 
of  a  miserable  ending,  the  other  with  glory  and  empire 
before  him.  Prince  Henry  did  not  apparently  come  with 
his  father  to  Scotland,  or  there  might  perhaps  have  been 
a  different  ending  to  the  tale,  and  it  would  not  have  needed 
Harry  Hotspur  to  rouse  his  namesake  from  his  folly. 
There  was,  alas  !  no  such  noble  rival  to  excite  David  of 
Scotland  to  emulation,  and  no  such  happy  turning-point 
before  him.  Xo  one,  not  even  a  minstrel  or  romancer, 
has  remembered  it  in  his  favor  that  he  once  defied  the 
English  host  for  the  love  of  his  country  and  the  old  never- 
abandoned  cause  of  Scottish  independence.  Already  it 
would  seem  a  prodigal  who  was  a  Stewart  had  less  chance 
than  other  men.  Whether  some  feeble  fiber  in  the  race 
had  already  developed  in  this  early  representative  of  the 
name,  or  whether  it  was  the  persistent  ill-fortune  which 
has  always  pursued  them,  making  life  a  continual  struggle 
and  death  a  violent  ending,  the  fatal  thread  which  has 
run  through  their  history  for  so  many  generations  comes 
here  into  the  most  tragic  prominence,  the  beginning  of  a 
long  series  of  tragedies.  It  adds  a  softening  touch  to  the 
record  of  David's  unhappy  fate  that  the  death  of  his 
mother  is  recorded  as  one  of  the  great  misfortunes  of  his 
life.  In  the  same  year  in  which  these  public  incidents 
occurred  the  Queen  died,  carrying  with  her  the  chief  in- 
fluence which  had  restrained  her  unfortunate  son.  She 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  45 

was  Annabella  Drummond,  a  woman  of  character  and 
note,  much  lamented  by  the  people.  And  to  add  to  this 
misfortune  she  was  followed  to  the  grave  within  a  year  by 
the  great  Earl  of  Angus,  David's  father-in-law,  and  the 
Bishop  of  St.  Andrews,  to  whom,  as  the  Primate  of  Scot- 
land, the  young  Prince's  early  instruction  had  probably 
been  committed,  as  his  loss  is  noted  along  with  the  others 
as  a  special  disaster. 

Thus  the  rash  and  foolish  youth  was  left  to  face  the 
world  and  all  its  temptations  with  no  longer  any  one  whom 
he  feared  to  grieve  or  whom  he  felt  himself  bound  to  obey. 
His  father,  a  fretful  invalid,  had  little  claim  upon  his 
reverence,  and  his  uncle  Albany,  the  strong  man  of  the 
family,  was  his  most  dangerous  enemy,  ever  on  the  watch 
to  clear  out  of  his  path  those  who  stood  between  him  and 
the  throne  :  or  such  at  least  was  the  impression  which  he 
left  upon  the  mind  of  his  time.  Thus  deprived  of  all  the 
guides  who  had  power  over  him,  and  of  the  only  parent 
whom  he  could  respect,  the  young  Duke  of  Eothesay,  only 
twenty-three  at  most,  plunged  into  all  those  indulgences 
which  are  so  fatally  easy  to  a  prince.  It  is  supposed  that 
the  marriage  into  which  a  false  policy  had  driven  him  was 
not  the  marriage  he  desired.  But  this  was  a  small  par- 
ticular in  those  days,  as  it  proved  even  in  other  times  less 
rude.  He  ran  into  every  kind  of  riot  and  dissipation, 
which  the  councilors  appointed  to  aid  him  could  not 
check.  After  no  doubt  many  remonstrances  and  appeals 
this  band  of  serious  men  relinquished  the  attempt,  declar- 
ing themselves  unable  to  persuade  the  Prince  even  to  any 
regard  for  decency  :  and  the  ill-advised  and  feeble  King 
committed  to  Albany,  who  had  been  standing  by  waiting 
for  some  such  piece  of  good  fortune,  the  reformation  of 
his  son.  The  catastrophe  was  not  slow  to  follow.  Eothe- 
say was  seized  near  St.  Andrews  on  the  pretense  of  stop- 
ping a  mad  enterprise  in  which  he  was  engaged,  and 


46  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

conveyed  to  Falkland,  where  he  died  in  strict  confine- 
ment, "  of  dysentery  or  others  say  of  hunger"  is  the  brief 
and  terrible  record — blaming  no  one — of  the  chroniclers, 
on  Easter  Eve  1401.  It  would  be  vain  to  attempt  to  add 
anything  to  the  picture  of  the  young  unfortunate  and  his 
end  which  Sir  Walter  Scott  has  given.  "VVe  can  but  res- 
cue out  of  obscurity  the  brief  moment  in  which  that 
young  life  was  at  the  turning-point  and  might  have 
changed  into  something  noble.  Had  his  challenge  been 
accepted,  and  had  he  died  sword  in  hand  outside  the  castle 
gates  for  Scotland  and  her  independence,  how  touching 
and  inspiring  would  have  been  the  story  !  But  fortune 
never  favored  the  Stewarts  ;  they  have  had  no  luck,  to 
use  a  more  homely  expression,  such  as  falls  to  the  lot  of 
other  races,  and  what  might  have  been  a  legend  of  chiv 
airy,  the  record  of  a  young  hero,  drops  to  the  horror  of  a 
miserable  murder  done  upon  a  victim  who  foils  even  the 
pity  he  excites — a  young  debauchee  almost  as  miserable 
and  wretched  as  the  means  by  which  he  died. 

There  was  this  relic  of  generosity  and  honor  about 
the  unfortunate  Prince,  even  in  his  fallen  state,  that  he 
refused  to  consent  to  the  assassination  of  the  uncle,  who 
found  no  difficulty,  it  would  appear,  in  assassinating  him  ; 
thus  showing  that  wayward  strain  of  nobleness  among 
many  defects  and  miseries  which  through  all  their  tragic 
career  was  to  be  found  even  in  the  least  defensible  of  his 
race. 

King  Eobert,  who  had  for  some  time  been  retired  from 
the  troubles  of  the  throne,  a  poor  man,  infirm  in  health 
and  in  purpose,  virtually  deposed  in  favor  of  the  son 
who  was  Lieutenant  or  the  brother  who  was  Kegent  of  the 
kingdom,  and  from  whom  all  his  domestic  comfort  had 
been  taken  as  well  as  his  power,  was  driven  to  despera- 
tion by  this  blow.  He  had  lost  his  wife  and  his  best 
counselors  j  he  had  never  been  strong  enough  to  restrain 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  47 

his  son,  nor  resist  his  brother.  David,  his  first-born  and 
heir,  the  gay  and  handsome  youth  who  was  dazzling  and 
delightful  to  his  father's  eyes  even  in  his  worst  follies, 
had  been,  as  no  doubt  he  felt,  delivered  over  to  his  worst 
enemy  by  that  father's  own  tremulous  hand ;  and  the 
heart-broken  old  man  in  his  bereavement  and  terror 
could  only  think  of  getting  th«?  one  boy  who  remained 
to  him  safe  and  out  of  harm's  way,  perhaps  with  the  feel- 
ing that  Albany  might  once  again  persuade  him  to  deliver 
over  this  last  hope  into  his  hands  if  he  did  not  take  a 
decisive  step  at  once.  The  boy-prince  was  at  St.  Andrews, 
pursuing  his  studies,  under  the  care  of  the  bishop,  when 
his  brother  was  murdered ;  and  from  thence  he  was  sent, 
when  the  preparations  were  complete,  across  the  Firth  to 
the  Bass,  there  to  await  a  ship  which  should  take  him  to 
France.  It  was  a  forlorn  beginning  for  the  Prince  of 
Scotland  to  be  thus  hastily  taken  from  his  books  and  the 
calm  of  a  semi-monastic  life  and  hurried  off  to  that  wild 
rock  in  the  middle  of  the  waves,  probably  with  his  brother's 
awful  story  thrilling  in  his  ears  and  his  terrible  uncle 
within  reach,  pushing  forward  a  mock  inquiry  in  Parlia- 
ment into  the  causes  of  Kothesay's  death.  How  easy  it 
would  have  been  for  that  uncle  with  the  supreme  power 
in  his  hands  to  seize  the  boy  who  now  stood  alone  between 
him  and  the  throne  ;  and  with  what  burning  at  the  heart, 
of  impotent  rage  and  fierce  indignation,  the  little  Prince, 
old  enough  to  know  and  feel  his  father's  helplessness,  his 
own  abandonment,  and  his  brother's  terrible  end,  must 
have  been  conveyed  away  to  the  sea  stronghold  among 
the  bitter  eastern  blasts.  James,  the  first  of  the  name, 
was  not  one  of  the  feeble  ones  of  the  family.  With  all  the 
romance  and  poetry  of  his  race  he  conjoined  a  great  spirit 
and  a  noble  intelligence,  and  even  at  twelve,  in  the  pre- 
cocious development  of  that  age  of  blood,  when  even  a 
royal  stripling  had  to  learn  to  defend  himself  and  hold 


48  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

his  own,  he  must  have  had  some  knowledge  why  it  waa 
that  he  had  to  be  sent  thus  clandestinely  out  of  his  native 
country  ;  he,  the  hope  of  Scotland,  in  terror  for  his  life. 

The  little  garrison  on  the  rock  and  the  governor  to 
whom  the  Prince's  safety  was  confided  must  have  watched 
with  many  an  anxious  vigil  among  the  trading  vessels 
stumbling  heavily  down  the  Firth  from  Leith,  for  that 
sail  which  was  to  carry  their  charge,  into  safety  as  they 
thought.  Whether  there  was  any  navy  belonging  to  the 
Crown  at  this  period,  or  whether  the  King  himself  pos- 
sessed some  galley  that  could  venture  on  the  voyage  to 
France,  we  are  not  told.  But  no  doubt  the  ship  when  it 
arrived  bore  some  sign  by  which  the  Prince's  guardians, 
and  unfortunately  others  besides,  could  recognize  it.  It 
could  not  be  in  any  way  a  cheerful  embarkation.  It  was 
in  the  dark  days  of  Lent,  in  March,  when  the  north  is 
most  severe  :  and  the  gray  skies  and  blighting  wind  would 
be  appropriate  to  the  feelings  of  the  exiles  as  they  put 
forth  from  their  rock  amid  the  wild  beating  of  the  surf, 
anxiously  Watched  by  the  defenders  of  the  place,  who  no 
doubt  had  at  the  same  time  to  keep  up  a  vigilant  inspec- 
tion landward,  lest  any  band  of  spearmen  from  Albany 
should  arrive  upon  the  adjacent  shore  in  time  to  stop  the 
flight.  The  gray  rock,  the  grayer  leaden  sea,  the  whirl- 
ing flight  of  wild  sea  birds  white  against  the  dark  horizon, 
the  little  boat,  kept  with  difficulty  from  dashing  against 
the  cliffs  and  rocky  boulders,  the  attendant  ship,  driven 
up  and  down  by  the  waves,  and  distant  Fife,  with  its  low 
hills  in  tones  of  neutral  tint  upon  the  horizon — would  all 
increase  the  sadness  of  the  parting  :  but  no  doubt  there 
was  a  long  breath  of  relief  breathed  by  everybody  about 
when  the  vessel  continued  its  course,  and  slowly  disap- 
peared down  the  Firth.  Whatever  might  happen  else- 
where, at  least  the  heir  was  safe. 

But-this  hope  soon  proved  futile.     Whether  it  was  some 


THE  BASS  KOCIL-Page  48. 


Koyal  Edinburgh. 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  49 

traitorous  indication  from  Albany,  or  information  from 
another  source,  or  pure  hazard,  which  directed  the  Eng- 
lish ships  to  this  one  vessel  with  its  royal  freight,  it  had 
but  rounded  the  headland  of  Flamborough  when  it  fell 
into  the  hands  of  the  enemy.  Palm  Sunday  1405  was  the 
date  of  this  event,  but  it  was  not  till  the  end  of  Lent  1423, 
almost  exactly  eighteen  years  after,  that  James  came 
back.  The  calamity  seemed  overwhelming  to  the  nation 
and  to  all  who  were  not  pledged  to  Albany  throughout 
Scotland.  It  was  the  death-warrant  of  poor  old  King 
Eobert  in  his  retirement.  He  lingered  out  a  weary  year 
in  sickness  and  sorrow,  and  when  the  anniversary  of  his 
son's  loss  came  round  again,  died  at  Kothesay,  in  Bute, 
amid  the  lovely  lakes  and  islets  of  western  Scotland — a 
scene  of  natural  peace  and  tranquillity,  which,  let  us  hope, 
shed  some  little  balm  upon  the  heart  of  the  helpless 
superseded  sovereign.  Perhaps  he  loved  the  place  be- 
cause it  had  given  his  title  to  his  murdered  boy,  the  hap- 
less David,  so  gallant  and  so  gay.  There  is  something 
more  than  ordinarily  pathetic  and  touching  in  the  misfor- 
tunes of  the  feeble  in  an  age  of  iron.  As  civilization 
advances  they  have  means  of  protecting  themselves,  but 
not  in  a  time  which  is  all  for  the  strongest.  One  son 
buried,  like  any  peasant's  son,  ignobly  in  the  Abbey  of 
Lindores  :  the  other  in  an  English  prison,  at  the  mercy 
of  the  "  auld  enemy,"  whom  Scotland  had  again  and 
again  resisted  to  the  death :  and  his  kingdom  entirely 
gone  from  him,  in  the  hands  of  his  arrogant  and  im- 
perious brother ;  there  was  nothing  left  for  poor  King 
Eobert  but  to  die. 

Thus  James  became  at  thirteen,  and  in  an  English 
castle,  the  King  of  Scotland.  His  prison,  however,  proved 
a  noble  school  instead  of  an  ignoble  confinement  to  his 
fine  and  elevated  spirit.  The  name  of  Stewart  has  never 
been  so  splendidly  illustrated  as  by  this  patriotic  and 
4 


50  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

chivalrous  Prince.  No  doubt  it  is  infinitely  to  the  credit 
of  the  English  kings,  both  Henrys,  IV.  and  V.,  that  he  re- 
ceived from  them  all  the  advantages  of  education  that 
could  have  been  given  to  a  prince  of  their  own  blood — ad- 
vantages by  which  he  profited  nobly,  acquiring  every  art 
and  cultivation  that  belonged  to  his  rank,  besides  that 
divine  art  which  no  education  can  communicate,  and  which 
is  bestowed  by  what  would  seem  a  caprice,  were  it  not 
divine,  upon  prince  or  plowman  as  it  pleases  God.  For 
above  all  his  knightly  and  kingly  qualities,  his  studies  in 
chivalry  and  statesmanship,  which  prepared  him  to  fill 
the  throne  of  Scotland  as  no  man  save  his  great  ancestor 
Bruce  had  yet  filled  it,  James  Stewart  was  a  poet  of  no 
mean  rank,  not  unworthy  to  be  named  even  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Chaucer,  and  well  worthy  of  the  place  which  he 
has  kept  in  literature.  We  need  not  enter  here  into  that 
part  of  his  history  which  concerns  another  locality  full  of 
great  and  princely  associations — the  noble  Castle  of  Wind- 
sor, where  the  royal  youth  first  saw  and  sang  the  lady  of 
his  love,  "the  fairest  and  the  sweeteste  yonge  flour,"  of 
whom  he  has  left  one  of  the  most  tender  and  beautiful 
descriptions  that  is  to  be  found  in  all  the  course  of 
poetry.  It  is  more  to  our  present  purpose  to  tell  how, 
amid  all  the  charms  of  that  courtly  residence,  so  far  su- 
perior to  anything  which  primitive  Scotland  could  offer  in 
the  way  of  dignity  or  luxury,  the  boy-king  remained  faith- 
ful to  his  country,  and  maintained  the  independence  for 
which  she  had  so  long  struggled.  It  is  said  that  the  one 
advantage  taken  of  his  captivity  and  youth  was  to  press 
the  old  oft-repeated  arguments  concerning  the  supposed 
supremacy  of  England,  and  the  homage  due  from  the 
kings  of  Scotland,  upon  the  boy  who  bore  that  title  sadly 
amid  the  luxury  and  splendor  of  what  was  still  a  prison, 
however  gracious  and  kind  his  jailers  might  be.  Xo  cir- 
cumstances could  have  been  better  suited  to  impress 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  51 

upon  James's  mind  the  conviction  that  submission  was 
inevitable  :  and  it  would  have  been  almost  more  than 
mortal  virtue  on  the  part  of  his  captors  had  they  not  at- 
tempted to  bring  about  so  advantageous  a  conviction. 
King  Henry  V,  under  whom  it  is  said  the  attempt  was 
made,  had  been  most  generously  liberal  to  and  careful 
of  the  boy.  He  was  a  man  so  brilliant  in  reputation  and 
success  that  a  generous  youth  might  well  have  been  led 
by  enthusiasm  into  any  homage  that  was  suggested,  too 
happy  to  feel  himself  thus  linked  to  so  great  a  king ; 
and  James  was  very  young,  distant  from  his  own  country 
and  all  native  advisers,  his  very  life  as  well  as  his  liberty 
in  the  power  of  those  who  asked  this  submission  from 
him,  and  the  force  of  circumstances  so  great  that  even 
his  own  people  might  have  forgiven,  and  Holy  Church 
could  scarcely  have  hesitated  to  dispense  him  from  keep- 
ing, an  obligation  entered  into  under  such  pressure.  But 
the  royal  youth  stood  fast,  and  was  not  to  be  moved  by 
any  argument.  Boece,  whose  authority  is  unfortunately 
not  much  to  be  depended  upon,  has  a  still  more  distinct 
and  graphic  story  of  judgment  and  firmness  on  the  part 
of  the  young  captive.  He  had  been,  according  to  this 
account,  taken  to  France  in  the  train  of  King  Henry,  who 
after  the  defeat  the  English  had  sustained  near  Orleans, 
chiefly  through  the  valor  of  the  Scots  who  had  joined  the 
French  army,  sent  for  James,  and  desired  him  "  to  pass 
to  the  Scots,  and  to  command  them  to  return  to  Scot- 
land. King  Harry  promised,  gif  the  said  James  brought 
this  matter  to  good  effect,  not  only  to  remit  his  ransom 
but  to  send  him  to  Scotland  with  great  riches  and  honor." 
James  answered  courteously,  with  expressions  of  good-will 
and  gratitude  for  the  humanity  shown  towards  him,  but 
"I  marvel  not  little,"  he  said,  "  that  thou  considerest 
not  how  I  have  no  power  above  the  Scots  so  long  as  I 
am  ane  private  man  and  holden  in  captivity."  The 


52  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

chronicler  adds  :  "  Then  said  King  Henry,  '  Maist  happy 
people  shall  they  be  that  happens  to  get  yon  noble  man 
to  their  prince.'"  It  is  a  pity  that  we  have  no  more 
trustworthy  proof  of  this  charming  story. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  James  attained  his  freedom  only 
after  the  death  of  Albany,  when  the  resistance  or  the  still 
more  effectual  indifference  to  his  liberation  of  the  man 
who  alone  could  profit  by  his  death  in  prison,  or  by  any 
unpopular  step  he  might  be  seduced  into  making  to  gain 
his  freedom,  was  dead,  and  had  ceased  from  troubling. 
It  would  perhaps,  however,  be  false  to  say  that  his  im- 
prisonment had  done  him  nothing  but  good.  So  far  as 
education  went  this  was  no  doubt  the  case  ;  but  it  is 
possible  that  in  his  subsequent  life  his  reforms  were  too 
rapid,  too  thorough-going,  too  modern,  for  Scotland.  The 
English  sovereigns  were  richer,  stronger,  and  more  potent ; 
the  English  commonalty  more  perfectly  developed,  and 
more  capable  of  affording  a  strong  support  to  a  monarch 
who  stood  against  the  nobles  and  their  capricious  tyranny. 
James  might  not  have  been  the  enlightened  ruler  he  was 
but  for  his  training  in  a  region  of  more  advanced  and 
cultivated  civilization  ;  but  had  he  been  less  enlightened, 
more  on  the  level  of  his  subjects,  he  might  have  had  a 
less  terrible  end  and  a  longer  career. 

He  returned  to  Scotland — with  the  bride  of  whom  he 
had  made  so  beautiful  a  picture,  preserving  her  lovely 
looks  and  curious  garments,  and  even  the  blaze  of  the 
Balas  ruby  on  her  white  throat,  to  be  a  delight  to  all  the 
after  generations — in  1423,  during  Lent ;  and  on  Passion 
Sunday,  which  Boece  calls  Care  Sunday,  entered  Edin- 
burgh, where  there  was  "  a  great  confluence  of  people  out 
of  all  parts  of  Scotland  richt  desirous  to  see  him  :  for 
many  of  them,"  says  the  chronicle,  "  had  never  seen  him 
before,  or  else  at  least  the  prent  of  his  visage  was  out  of 
their  memory."  There  must  indeed  have  been  but  few 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  53 

who  could  recognize  the  little  prince  who  had  been  stolen 
uway  for  safety  at  twelve  in  the  accomplished  man  of 
thirty  in  all  the  fulness  of  his  development,  a  bridegroom, 
and  accustomed  to  the  state  and  prestige  of  a  richer 
Court  than  anything  that  Scotland  could  boast,  who  thus 
came  among  them  full  of  the  highest  hopes  and  purposes, 
and  surrounded  by  unusual  splendor  and  wealth.  It  is 
true  there  was  the  burden  behind  him  of  a  heavy  ransom 
to  pay,  but  her  English  kindred,  we  may  well  believe,  did 
not  suffer  the  Lady  Jane  to  appear  in  her  new  kingdom 
without  every  accessory  that  became  a  queen  ;  and  a  noble 
retinue  of  adventurous  knights,  eager  to  try  their  prowess 
against  the  countrymen  of  that  great  Douglas  whose  name 
was  still  so  well  known,  would  swell  the  train  of  native 
nobles  who  attended  the  sovereign.  Old  Edinburgh  comes 
to  light  in  the  glow  of  this  arrival,  not  indeed  with  any 
distinctness  of  vision,  but  with  something  of  the  aspect 
of  a  capital  filled  to  overflowing  with  a  many-colored  and 
picturesque  crowd.  The  country  folk  in  their  homespun, 
and  all  the  smaller  rank  of  gentlemen,  with  their  wives 
in  the  French  hoods  which  fashion  already  dictated, 
thronged  the  ways  and  filled  every  window  to  see  the 
King  come  in.  It  was  more  like  the  new  setting  up  of  a 
kingdom,  and  first  invention  of  that  dignity,  than  a  mere 
return  :  and  eager  crowds  came  from  every  quarter  to  see 
the  King,  so  long  a  mere  name,  now  suddenly  blazing  into 
reality,  with  all  the  primitive  meaning  of  the  word  so 
much  greater  and  more  living  than  anything  that  is  un- 
derstood in  it  now.  The  King's  Grace  !  after  the  long 
sway  of  the  Eegent,  always  darkly  feared  and  suspected, 
and  the  feeble  deputy  ship  full  of  abuses  of  his  son  Mur- 
doch, it  was  like  a  new  world  to  have  the  true  Prince 
come  back,  the  blood  of  Bruce,  the  genuine  and  native 
King,  not  to  speak  of  the  fair  Princess  by  his  side  and 
the  quickened  life  they  brought  with  them.  From  the 


54:  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

gates  of  the  castle  where  they  first  alighted,  down  the 
long  ridge — through  the  half-grown  town  within  its  narrow 
walls,  where  a  few  high  houses,  first  evidences  of  the 
growth  of  the  wealthy  burgher  class,  alternated  with  the 
low  buildings  which  they  were  gradually  supplanting — 
through  the  massive  masonry  of  the  Port  with  its  battle- 
ments and  towers  to  the  country  greenness  and  freshness 
of  the  Canon's  Gate  which  led  to  the  great  convent  of  the 
valley,  there  could  be  no  finer  scene  for  a  pageant.  Holy- 
rood  was  one  of  those  great  monastic  establishments  in 
which  kings  could  find  a  lodgment  more  luxurious  than 
in  their  own  castles,  and  though  there  would  scarcely  seem 
as  yet  to  have  been  any  palace  attached  to  that  holy  house, 
it  was  already  a  frequent  residence  of  royalty,  and  with 
all  its  amenities  of  parks  and  gardens  would  be  more  fit 
for  the  reception  of  a  young  queen  coming  straight  from 
princely  Windsor  than  the  narrow  chambers  in  the  castle. 
Among  the  many  presents  which  she  is  said  to  have 
brought  with  her  from  England  there  is  a  special  mention 
of  fine  tapestries  for  the  adornment  of  her  new  habitation. 
Thus  the  royal  pair  took  possession  of  their  kingdom, 
and  of  the  interest  and  affection  of  the  lively  and  eager 
crowd  for  which  Edinburgh  has  always  been  famous — a 
populace  more  like  that  of  a  French  town  than  an  English, 
though  with  impulses  sometimes  leading  to  tragedy. 
James  would  scarcely  seem  to  have  been  settled  in  that 
part  of  the  ancient  establishment  of  the  abbey  which  was 
appropriated  to  the  lodging  of  the  King,  or  to  have  ex- 
hausted the  thanksgivings  of  Easter  and  the  rejoicings  of 
the  restoration,  when  he  set  himself  to  inquire  into  the 
state  of  the  country  and  of  the  royal  finances,  to  which 
he  had  been  so  long  a  stranger.  There  was  no  Civil  List 
in  those  days  nor  votes  of  supply,  and  the  state  of  the 
Crown  lands  and  possessions,  "  the  King's  rents,"  was 
doubly  important  in  view  of  the  ransom  yet  to  be  paid, 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  55 

of  which  only  a  fourth  part  had  been  remitted  as  the  por- 
tion of  the  Queen.  The  result  of  this  investigation  was 
anything  but  satisfactory.  It  was  found  that  during  the 
reign  of  Albany  many  of  these  possessions  had  been 
alienated,  made  into  fiefs,  and  bestowed  upon  the  leaders 
of  the  faction  Avhich  supported  the  Regent.  "  There 
was  nothing  left  to  sustain  the  Crown,"  says  Boece,  "  ex- 
cept the  customs  of  burrows.  He  was  naething  content 
of  this,"  adds  the  chronicler  with  pithy  conciseness, 
"  howbeit  he  shewed  good  will  (gud  vult)  for  the  time." 
James  had  already  griefs  enough  against  the  family  of 
his  cousin  without  this  startling  discovery  ;  and  his 
' '  gud  vult  "  would  seem  rather  to  have  been  the  serious 
self-control  of  a  man  who  was  biding  his  time  than  any 
pretense  of  friendliness  with  his  unfaithful  relations  and 
stewards.  Amid  the  early  pageants  and  festivities  it  is 
indeed  recorded  that  he  knighted  Walter  Stewart  among 
the  other  candidates  for  that  honor,  the  flower  of  the 
noble  youth,  a  band  of  twenty-six  gentlemen  of  the  best 
houses  in  Scotland  ;  but  this  was  probably  a  step  which 
was  inevitable  as  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  leave 
his  own  nearest  relative  out  of  the  list  until  he  had  finally 
made  up  his  mind  how  the  family  of  Albany  was  to  be 
treated.  It  is  stated  that  the  complaints  and  grievances 
of  the  people  brought  him  to  a  decision  on  this  point,  and 
helped  him  to  carry  out  his  revenge  upon  the  house  which 
had  in  popular  belief  at  least, the  guilt  of  his  brother's  blood 
upon  it  as  well  as  that  of  his  own  long  confinement. 
Walter  Stewart,  whose  only  other  appearance  in  history 
is  that  of  a  rebellious  and  undutiful  son  whom  his  father 
was  incapable  of  keeping  in  subjection,  was  arrested  in 
Edinburgh  Castle  about  a  year  after  James's  restoration, 
and  after  an  interval  of  several  months  his  arrest  was 
followed  by  that  of  Duke  Murdoch  and  his  son  Alexander, 
both  of  whom  were  also  seized  in  Edinburgh  Castle, 


56  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

where  they  had  probably  retired  for  safety.  A  few  of 
their  retainers  arrested  with  them  were  speedily  liberated, 
and  it  became  apparent  that  upon  this  doomed  family 
alone  was  King  James's  wrath  directed.  They  were  tried 
at  Stirling,  by  a  court  of  their  peers,  under  the  presi- 
dency of  the  King  himself.  The  offenses  charged  against 
them  were  misgovernment  and  oppression  of  the  people, 
the  greatest  of  public  sins  :  but  it  was  no  less  the  end  of 
a  long  tragedy.  The  younger  branch  of  the  race 'had  been 
engaged  in  a  struggle  with  the  elder  for  the  last  two  gen- 
erations at  least  :  and  it  had  been  the  royal  line  that  had 
suffered  most  during  that  period.  Bitterly,  in  blood  and 
heartbreak  and  long  suppression,  they  had  been  weighed 
down  under  superior  force  :  but  now  the  time  of  reprisals 
had  come.  As  they  stood  there  confronting  each  other, 
the  stern  young  King  on  one  side  and  his  kinsmen  on  the 
other,  with  a  quarter  of  a  century  of  wrong  between  them, 
the  shadow  of  the  young  prince  at  Falkland,  and  the  old 
father  at  Rothesay,  and  the  eighteen  years  of  captivity 
full  in  the  minds  of  all,  what  a  day  of  reckoning  at  last  ! 
It  makes  the  retribution  almost  more  tragic,like  the  over- 
whelming fate  of  the  Greek  drama,  that  the  men  upon 
their  trial  had  nothing  to  do  with  these  crimes,  unless 
it  might  be  the  last.  Murdoch  of  Albany  had  not  exerted 
himself  to  liberate  James,  but  that  was  his  only  evident 
offense,  and  his  sons  were  not  instrumental,  so  far  as  ap- 
pears, in  any  injury  to  their  royal  cousin.  The  sins  of 
the  fathers  were  to  be  visited  upon  the  children.  We  are 
told  that  the  two  sons,  young  men  in  the  flower  of  their 
youth,  were  executed  one  day,  and  their  father  and 
maternal  grandfather,  a  very  old  man,  the  Earl  of  Len- 
nox, whose  share  in  the  matter  it  is  difficult  to  make  out, 
on  the  next.  Thus  James  settled  summarily  the  ques- 
tion between  himself  and  his  kinsmen.  The  house  of 
Albany  ended  upon  the  scaffold,  and  however  just  their 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  57 

doom  might  have  been,  there  was  something  appalling  in 
this  swift  and  sweeping  revenge,  carried  out  rigorously 
without  a  sign  of  hesitation  by  a  young  king,  a  happy 
bridegroom,  an  accomplished  and  gay  cavalier. 

It  must  indeed  be  allowed,  notwithstanding  his  poetry 
and  his  evident  love  of  everything  that  was  lovely  and  of 
good  report,  that  the  reign  of  the  first  James  was  a  stern 
one.  Every  witness  agrees  as  to  his  accomplishment,  and 
that  he  was  the  flower  of  knighthood,  of  splendor  and 
courtesy,  the  most  chivalrous,  the  most  daring,  the  most 
graceful  and  gracious  of  all  his  Court :  and  his  genius  as 
a  poet  is  even  more  generally  acknowledged.  The  King's 
"  Quhair  "  as  a  poem  is  quite  capable  of  standing  on  its 
own  merits,  and  needs  no  additional  prestige  as  the  per- 
formance of  a  king.  Had  he  been  but  a  wandering  min- 
strel Chaucer  would  have  had  no  need  to  be  ashamed  of 
his  pupil.  It  is  full  of  delightful  descriptions  of  nature 
and  love  and  youth  :  the  fresh  morning  as  it  rises  upon 
the  castled  heights,  the  singing  of  the  birds  and  fluttering 
of  the  leaves,  the  impulse  of  a  young  heart  even  in  the 
languor  of  imprisonment  to  start  up  and  meet  the  sun, 
with  all  the  springs  of  a  new  life  which  at  that  verdant 
season  come  with  every  new  day — the  apparition  of  the 
beautiful  one  suddenly  appearing  in  the  old  immemorial 
garden  with  all  its  flowers,  herself  the  sweetest  and  the  fair- 
est of  flowers,  all  are  set  before  us,  with  a  harmony  and 
music  not  to  be  excelled.  The  young  Prince  chafing  at 
his  imprisonment,  dreaming  of  all  the  fantastic  wonderful 
things  he  might  do  were  he  free,  yet  still  so  full  of  irrepres- 
sible hope  that  his  impatience  and  his  longings  are  but 
another  form  of  pleasure,  takes  shape  and  identity  as 
distinct  as  if  he  had  been  one  of  the  figures  in  that 
famous  pilgrimage  to  Canterbury,  which  had  been  part 
of  his  training  in  this  delightful  art.  If  James  bad 
never  reigned  at  all  he  would  still  have  lived  through  all 


58  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

these  centuries  in  the  guise  in  which  he  stood  at  his  win- 
dow on  that  May  morning,  and  suddenly,  amid  his 
youthful  dreams,  beheld  the  lovely  vision  of  the  Lady 
Jane  emerging  from  under  the  young  spring  verdure  of 
the  trees.  There  is  a  certain  window  not  generally  sup- 
posed to  be  that  at  which  the  royal  captive  stood — a 
window  in  the  Norman  Tower  of  Windsor  Castle,  now 
fitly  garnished  and  guarded  by  sympathetic  hands,  from 
which  the  spectator  looking  out  upon  the  deep  moat-garden 
underneath  in  the  circle  about  the  old  donjon  will  scarcely 
be  able  to  withstand  the  thrill  of  feeling  which  attends  a 
poetic  scene  and  incident  fully  realized.  Nothing  could 
be  more  green,  more  fresh,  more  full  of  romance  and  as- 
sociation, than  this  garden  where  all  is  youthful  as  the 
May,  yet  old  in  endless  tradition,  the  garden  of  the 
Edwards  and  Henrys,  where  Chaucer  himself  may  have 
thought  over  his  accounts  or  taken  the  delightful  image 
of  his  young  squire  "  synging"  who  was,  "  or  flouting  all 
the  day  "  from  among  some  group  of  bright-faced  lads  in 
their  bravery,  where  the  countess  who  dropped  her  garter 
may  have  wandered,  and  the  hapless  Henry,  the  mild 
and  puny  child  who  was  born  there  while  James  was  un- 
dergoing his  far  from  harsh  captivity,  played.  James 
Stewart's  name,  had  he  been  no  king,  would  have  been 
associated  with  this  place  as  that  of  his  master  in  poetry 
is  with  the  flowery  ways  of  Kent. 

Nor  was  his  inspiration  derived  alone  from  the  well  of 
English  undefiled.  A  still  more  wonderful  gift  developed 
in  him  when  he  got  home  to  his  native  country.  Though 
the  tones  of  Scotch  humor  were  much  less  refined,  and  its 
utterances  at  that  early  period  could  be  scarcely  more 
than  the  jests  and  unwritten  ballads  of  the  populace,  yet 
his  early  acquaintance  with  them  must  have  lingered  in 
the  young  Prince's  mind,  acquiring  additional  zest  from 
the  prepossessions  of  exile  and  the  longing  for  home. 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  59 

And  when  the  polished  singer  of  the  King's  "  Quhair  " 
found  himself  again  in  his  native  land  he  seems  to  have 
burst  forth  with  the  most  genuine  impulse  into  the  broad 
fun,  rustical  and  natural  and  racy  of  the  soil,  which  per- 
haps was  more  congenial  to  his  Scottish  audience. 
"Peblis  to  the  Play"  and  "  Christis  Kirk  on  the  Green" 
are  poems  full  of  the  very  breath  of  rural  life  and  the 
rude  yet  joyous  meetings  of  the  country  folk  at  kirk  and 
market,  which  with  wonderfully  little  difference  of  senti- 
ment and  movement  also  inspired  Burns.  He  must  have 
had  a  mind  full  of  variety  and  wide  human  sympathy 
almost  Shakspearian,  who  could  step  from  the  musings  of 
Windsor  and  the  beautiful  heroine,  all  romance  and  ethe- 
real splendor,  to  the  lasses  in  their  gay  kirtles,  and  Hob 
and  Eaaf  with  their  rustic  "  daffing,"  as  true  to  the  life 
as  the  Ayrshire  clowns  of  Burns,  and  all  the  clumsy  yet 
genial  gambols  of  the  village  festival.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  curious  and  least  to  be  expected  transformations 
of  poetic  versatility — for  it  is  even  amazing  how  he  could 
know  the  life  into  which  he  thus  plunged  joyous,  as  if  he 
had  been  familiar  with  it  from  his  childhood.  King 
James  was  not  without  an  object  amid  all  the  laughter 
and  the  pranks  of  his  holiday.  The  King's  cheerful 
ridicule  of  the  clumsy  fellows  who  could  not  draw  the 
bow  was  intended,  with  a  prick  of  scorn  under  the 
laughter,  to  rouse  up  his  rustic  lieges  to  emulation,  not 
to  be  behind  the  southern  pock-puddings  whose  deadly 
arrows  were,  in  every  encounter  between  Scots  and  Eng-  , 
lish,  the  chief  danger  to  the  fighting  men  of  the  north. 
It  is  curious  that  this  difference  should  have  existed  and 
continued  with  such  obstinacy  through  all  these  fighting 
centuries  ;  the  Scotch  spearmen  were  all  but  invulnerable 
in  their  steady  square,  like  a  rock,  but  they  had  little 
defense  against  the  cloth-yard  shafts  of  the  English  bow- 
men, which  neither  exhortation  nor  ridicule,  neither  prizes 


60  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

to  win  nor  disaster  to  fear,  could  teach  them  to  adopt. 
James  labored  hard,  in  ways  more  practical  than  his 
poems,  to  introdnce  this  new  arm,  but  in  vain.  It  was 
kept  up  languidly  in  holiday  contentions,  like  that  of 
Christis  Kirk  on  the  Green,  while  his  life  lasted ;  but 
when  his  reign  was  over  and  the  momentary  stimulus 
withdrawn  the  bows  were  all  thrown  away. 

The  King's  command  of  this  humorous  vein,  so  dear  to 
his  people,  with  its  trenchant  sketches  from  the  life  and 
somewhat  rough  jests,  is  wonderful,  when  his  courtly 
breeding  and  long  separation  even  from  such  knowledge 
of  rustic  existence  as  a  prince  is  likely  to  obtain  is  con- 
sidered. And  the  many-sided  nature  which  made  these 
humors  so  familiar  and  easy  to  him  is  a  strange  discovery 
in  the  midst  of  all  the  tragic  circumstances  of  his  life 
and  reign.  The  union  of  the  most  delicate  poetry  and 
romance  with  that  genial  whim  and  fancy  is  unusual 
enough  :  but  it  is  still  more  unusual  to  find  the  stern  Jus- 
ticiar,  avenger  of  blood  and  redresser  of  wrong,  the  re- 
constructor  of  a  distracted  country,  capable  not  only  of 
the  broad  fun  of  the  rustic  ballad-maker,  but  of  so  toler- 
ant and  humorous  a  view  of  the  humble  commons,  the 
underlying  masses  upon  which  society  is  built.  For  the 
first  aspect  of  affairs  in  Scotland  could  not  be  a  cheer- 
ful one  :  although  it  was  rather  with  the  nobles  and 
gentlemen,  the  great  proprietors  of  the  country,  who  had 
to  be  summoned  to  exhibit  their  charters  and  prove  their 
titles,  partly  no  doubt  with  the  view  of  discovering  what 
Crown  lands  had  been  alienated  by  the  Albany  party, 
that  the  King's  quarrel  was,  than  with  the  humbler  sub- 
jects of  the  nation. 

Yet  there  is  no  doubt,  with  all  these  lights  and  soften- 
ing influences  of  character  and  genius,  that  his  reign  was 
a  stern  one.  James  had  everything  to  reform  in  the 
country  to  which  he  came  with  so  many  new  ideas  and  so 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  61 

enlarged  a  knowledge  of  what  the  internal  economy  of  a 
nation  might  be  made.  It  is  rather  against  the  general 
historical  estimate  of  the  talents  and  power  of  the  Regent 
Albany  that  the  new  King  should  have  found,  as  appears, 
so  much  to  do  for  the  reorganization  of  the  common- 
wealth— regulating  the  laws,  appointing  courts  of  justice, 
inquiring  into  the  titles  of  property,  and  in  every  other 
way  giving  consistency  and  order  to  the  affairs  of  Scot- 
land. However,  the  lavish  grants  made  to  the  great  Scots 
lords  and  the  license  given  them  to  rule  their  vassals  as 
they  pleased  arose  not  from  weakness  but  from  Albany's 
deliberate  policy  of  securing  a  strong  party  on  his  side,  a 
policy  exactly  opposed  to  that  of  James,  whose  heart  was 
set  on  subduing  these  fierce  nobles,  and  perhaps  of  devel- 
oping the  people  at  large,  the  nation  itself,  if  that  is  not 
too  modern  an  ambition.  The  reign  of  Law,  broken  and 
disturbed  by  a  hundred  storms,  but  still  henceforward 
with  a  statute-book  to  fall  back  upon  and  some  fitful 
authority  at  its  command,  began  in  Scotland  in  his  day. 

There  are  some  curious  details  in  the  Scoticlironicon 
about  the  taxes,  now,  it  would  seem,  for  the  first  time 
levied  upon  the  general  mass  of  the  people.  In  1424,  the 
year  after  James's  return,  a  tax  of  twelvepence  in  the 
pound  was  imposed  by  the  Parliament  at  Perth,  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  King's  state  and  payment  of  his  ran- 
som, upon  all  goods,  lands,  and  annual  revenues  of  what- 
ever description,  both  spiritual  and  temporal,  which  was 
passed  with  the  consent  of  the  estates,  no  doubt  under 
the  stimulus  of  the  general  rejoicing  at  the  King's  return. 
This  impost  was  to  last  for  two  years.  An  income  tax  so 
general  and  all-embracing  could  scarcely  be  expected  to 
be  popular,  but  for  the  first  year  it  was  paid,  we  are  told, 
with  readiness,  certain  of  the  greatest  nobles  in  the  king- 
dom being  appointed  in  their  various  districts  to  the 
office  of  collecting.  That  the  Church  should  have  taken. 


62  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

her  share  in  the  payment  of  this  tax  says  much  for  the 
loyalty  of  the  Scotch  priesthood  and  their  unity  with  the 
people  at  this  crisis  of  the  national  history.  In  the  sec- 
ond year,  however,  grumblings  arose.  It  is  comprehen- 
sible that  a  nation  unaccustomed  to  this  pressure  should 
respond  to  it  in  a  moment  of  enthusiasm,  yet  become 
uneasy  under  the  repetition  when  the  enthusiasm  had 
probably  died  away,  especially  if  a  fear  arose  that  it  might 
-become  permanent.  King  James,  however,  adopted  a 
course  not  at  all  usual  with  governments  when  the  power 
to  exact  has  once  been  placed  in  their  hands.  When  the 
popular  murmur  came  to  his  ears  he  stopped  at  once  the 
unpopular  demand.  How  the  paying  of  the  ransom  was 
carried  on,  and  how  the  maintenance  of  the  King's  state 
we  need  not  inquire.  The  Crown  lands  were  no  doubt 
extensive  still.  Some  years  later  another  experiment  of 
the  same  kind  was  made ;  the  new  tax,  however,  being 
only  twopence  in  the  pound,  and  its. object  the  payment 
of  expenses  of  a  mission  sent  to  France  to  negotiate  a 
marriage  between  the  baby-princess  Margaret  and  the 
equally  juvenile  dauphin — an  object  which  does  not 
appear  to  have  appealed  to  the  sympathies  of  the  people, 
since  we  are  told  that  it  was  the  cause  of  immediate 
murmurs,  the  King  not  only  stopped  the  unpopular  tax 
but  returned  the  money  to  those  who  had  paid  it — a  most 
admirable  but  seldom  followed  example. 

The  curious  system  afterwards  employed  by  all  the 
Scots  kings  of  tours  or  "raids"  of  justice  throughout  the 
kingdom  seems  to  have  originated  in  James's  energetic 
reign,  but  he  carried  not  only  the  officers  of  the  law, 
but  occasionally  his  entire  Parliament  with  him,  moving 
about  to  the  different  centers  of  Scotland  with  great  im- 
partiality. Sometimes  they  met  at  Edinburgh,  in  the 
Great  Parliament  Hall  in  the  Castle,  and  made  "  many 
good  laws  if  they  could  have  been  kept,"  says  the  chroni- 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  (53 

cler  ;  sometimes  at  Perth,  a  favorite  residence  of  the  King  ; 
and  on  one  memorable  occasion  so  far  north  as  Inverness, 
where,  impatient  of  continual  disquietude  in  the  High- 
lands, James  went  to  chastise  the  caterans  and  bring 
them  within  the  reach  of  law.  This  he  did  with  a  severe 
and  unsparing  hand,  seizing  a  number  of  the  most  emi- 
nent chiefs  who  had  been  invited  to  meet  him  there, 
and  executing  certain  dangerous  individuals  among  them 
without  mercy.  These  summary  measures  would  seem 
to  have  borne  immediate  fruit  in  the  almost  complete 
subjugation  of  the  Highlands.  But  it  was  hard  to  reckon 
with  such  a  restless  element  as  the  clans,  and  hanging 
and  heading  were  very  ineffectual  measures  among  people 
with  whom  "another  for  Hector"  was  the  simplest  sug- 
gestion of  natural  law. 

It  was  after  this  stern  Parliament  of  Inverness  that 
there  occurred  at  Edinburgh  one  of  the  most  curious  and 
picturesque  scenes  that  it  is  possible  to  imagine.  One  of 
the  chiefs  tried  at  that  assize  was  the  greatest  and  most 
important  of  all,  the  Lord  of  the  Isles,  sometimes 
called  Donald  and  sometimes  Alexander  by  the  chroni- 
clers, who  on  his  promise  to  amend  his  ways,  and  no 
longer  harbor  caterans  or  head  forays,  was,  no  doubt 
out  of  respect  for  his  almost  princely  position,  set 
at  liberty.  But  no  sooner  was  the  fierce  chieftain  set 
free,  "within  a  few  days  after,"  says  the  chronicler, 
than  he  took  and  burnt  the  town  of  Inverness,  in  which 
the  Parliament  had  been  held,  and  showed  his  im- 
penitence by  an  utter  abuse  of  the  mercy  accorded  to  him. 
When,  however,  he  heard  that  the  King  himself  with  all 
the  forces  of  the  kingdom  was  coming  against  him, 
Donald  hastily  disbanded  his  men  and  took  refuge  in  the 
watery  fastnesses  of  his  islands  :  and  it  would  seem  that 
he  must  have  felt  the  tide  of  national  sentiment  to  be 
against  him,  and  his  power  not  equal  to  make  any  stand 


64  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

against  all  the  force  of  peaceful  and  law-abiding  Scotland 
under  the  energetic  new  King.  The  wily  Highlander 
made  his  submission  in  the  way  which,  no  doubt,  he 
thought  most  likely  to  disarm  authority  and  gain  exemp- 
tion. He  chose  Easter  day,  the  greatest  of  religious 
festivals,  for  his  appearance  as  a  penitent,  and  in  the 
middle  of  the  service  in  the  Chapel  of  Holyrood  appeared 
suddenly,  almost  without  clothing,  and  knelt  down  be- 
fore the  king  "  where  he  was  sittand  at  his  orison,"  pray- 
ing for  grace  in  the  name  of  Him  who  rose  from  the  dead 
that  day.  So  strange  an  interruption  in  the  midst  of  all 
the  glories  of  the  Easter  mass  throws  a  strange  and  wild 
light  upon  the  varieties  of  national  life  in  Scotland. 
That  half-savage  figure,  with  plaid  and  weapons  cast 
aside,  defenseless,  at  the  King's  mercy,  in  all  the  primitive 
abandonment  yet  calculation  of  early  patriachal  times  ; 
while  all  that  the  art  and  culture  of  a  splendid  age  could 
do  to  give  magnificence  to  the  most  imposing  ceremonial 
of  the  Church  surrounded  this  strange  apparition,  the  in- 
cense rising,  the  music  pealing,  the  Court  in  all  its  glory 
of  flashing  jewels  and  splendid  stuffs  filling  the  lofty  area. 
Like  some  wild  god  of  the  mists  suddenly  gleaming 
through  the  fragrant  smoke  between  the  bishop's  white 
robes  and  the  kneeling  King,  what  a  strange  interruption 
to  the  mass  !  The  King,  at  the  request  of  the  Queen  we 
are  told,  gave  him  his  life,  as  the  adjuration  addressed  to 
him  and  all  the  force  of  the  surroundings  gave  James  litttle 
choice  but  to  do  ;  for  he  could  not  have  offended  the  senti- 
ment of  his  people  by  refusing  the  boon  which  was  de- 
manded in  that  Name,  however  doubtful  he  might  be  of 
the  expediency  of  granting  it.  "  Then  the  King  began  to 
muse,"  says  Boece.  He  must  have  been  devout  indeed 
to  have  been  able  to  return  to  the  course  of  the  service 
with  the  Islesman  before  him  on  his  knees,  and  all  that 
wild  half  of  the  kingdom,  with  its  dangerous  habits  and 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  65 

fierce  tribal  laws,  thus  suddenly  made  visible — a  specter 
which  had  often  before  troubled  the  King's  peace. 
James  had  not  to  learn  for  the  first  time  that  apparent 
submission  from  such  a  suppliant  did  not  necessarily 
mean  any  real  change,  and  must  have  thoroughly  felt  the 
hollowness  of  that  histrionic  appearance  and  all  the  diffi- 
culties which  beset  his  own  action  in  the  matter.  The 
conclusion  was,  that  the  life  of  the  Lord  of  the  Isles 
was  spared,  but  he  was  committed  to  safekeeping  in  the 
strong  Castle  of  Tantallon,  with,  however,  the  unfailing 
consequence,  that  his  brother  took  the  field  with  all  his 
caterans  in  his  stead. 

James  reigned  in  Scotland  for  thirteen  years — a  reign 
full  of  commotion  and  movement,  by  which  many  in  high 
place  were  humiliated,  the  spoils  of  the  feudal  tyrants 
taken  from  them,  and  the  wrongs  of  the  suffering  com- 
monalty redressed,  proceedings  which  procured  for  the 
King  many  enemies  among  the  nobility  before  the  force 
of  popular  sentiment  was  strong  enough  to  balance  this 
opposition  by  its  support.  He  began  in  Scotland  that 
struggle  which  for  some  time  had  been  going  on  in  Eng- 
land against  the  power  of  the  nobles,  who  were  still  in 
the  north  something  like  a  number  of  petty  kings  ruling 
in  their  own  right,  making  little  account  of  national  laws, 
and  regarding  the  King  with  defiance  as  almost  a  hostile 
power.  One  of  the  greatest  risks  of  such  a  struggle  is 
that  it  raises  now  and  then  a  fiery  spirit  stung  by  the 
sense  of  injury  and  the  rage  of  deprivation  into  a  wild 
passion  of  revenge  which  bursts  every  restraint.  The 
Grahams  of  Strathearn  in  the  north  had  fallen  specially 
under  the  rectifying  process  of  James's  new  laws  of  prop- 
erty :  and  out  of  this  house  there  suddenly  arose  the  tragic 
figure  of  an  avenger  whose  brief  but  terrible  career  occu- 
pies but  a  single  page  in  history,  yet  contains  all  the  ele- 
ments of  a  fatal  drama.  Sir  Eobert  Graham,  of  whose 
5 


66  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

antecedents  there  is  little  record,  was  not  the  head  of  the 
house,  but  a  younger  brother  of  daring  character,  and  cne 
of  those  fanatics  of  race  to  whom  the  glory  of  their  house 
is  a  religion.  The  first  we  hear  of  him  is  a  sudden  ay 
pearance  in  the  Parliament  of  January  1435,  when  he 
made  a  fiery  and  violent  speech,  ending  by  an  impeach 
ment  of  the  King  himself  for  injustice  and  robbery.  Such 
an  assault  would  find  little  support  in  the  public  assembly 
of  the  States,  in  the  awe  of  the  royal  presence,  and  Gra- 
ham had  to  escape  for  his  life,  finding  means  of  flight 
into  the  Highlands,  the  ever-ready  refuge  for  rebels. 
There  he  launched  wild  threats  against  James,  which  the 
King,  probably  well  accustomed  to  missiles  of  the  kind, 
paid  little  attention  to.  The  monarch  was  warned  too, 
we  are  told,  by  another  wild  apparition,  which  suddenly 
appears  out  of  the  mists  for  this  purpose — a  Highland 
witch  of  the  order  of  those  who  drove  Macbeth's  ambition 
to  frenzy,  but  whose  mission  now  was  to  warn  James  of 
the  mischief  brewing  against  him.  The  King  was  brave 
and  careless,  used  to  the  continual  presence  of  danger, 
keeping  his  Christmas  merrily  at  Perth  with  all  the  sports 
and  entertainments  with  which  it  was  possible  to  cheat 
the  gloomy  weather,  and  made  little  but  additional  mirth 
both  of  the  prophecy  and  the  threats.  Evidently  the 
Court  found  pleasure  in  the  fair  city  on  the  Tay.  They 
were  still  lingering  there,  having  taken  up  their  residence 
in  the  monastery  of  the  Black  Friars,  at  the  end  of  Feb- 
ruary. In  Scotland  as  elsewhere  the  great  religious 
houses  seem  to  have  been  the  best  adapted  to  give  hospi- 
tality to  kings.  It  was  long  after  this  date  before  any- 
thing that  could  be  called  an  independent  royal  residence 
was  built  at  Holyrood  itself  :  for  generations  the  King  and 
Court  were  but  guests  in  the  stately  abbey,  which  was, 
like  the  monastery  of  the  Black  Friars,  so  convenient  and 
commodious  a  house  both  for  entertainment  and  shelter 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  67 

that  its  great  chambers  became  the  natural,  as  they  were 
the  most  stately  and  pleasant,  lodging  that  could  be  pro- 
vided for  a  monarch. 

The  tragedy  that  followed  is  well  known.  At  the  end 
of  a  pleasant  evening  when  there  had  been  music — in 
which  James  himself  was  the  first  connoisseur  in  Scotland, 
inventing,  some  say,  the  national  lilt,  the  rapidly  rising 
and  falling  strain  which  is  so  full  of  pathos  yet  so  adapt- 
able to  mirth — "and  other  honest  solaces  of  great  pleas- 
ance  and  disport,"  the  sound  of  trampling  feet  and  angry 
voices  broke  upon  the  conventual  stillness  outside  and 
the  cheerful  talk  of  the  friendly  group  within.  The 
King  was  taken  at  a  disadvantage,  apparently  without 
even  a  gentleman  of  his  Court  near  him,  nothing  but.  his 
wife  and  her  ladies  lingering  for  a  last  moment  of  pleas- 
ant conversation  before  they  went  to  bed.  It  is  easy  to 
imagine  the  horror  with  which  the  little  party  must  have 
listened  to  the  rush  of  the  savage  band,  hoping  perhaps 
at  first  that  it  was  but  some  tumult  in  the  street,  or  affray 
between  the  townsfolk  and  the  caterans — never  very  far 
off  and  often  threatening  St.  John's  town — till  the  cries 
and  clashing  of  the  arms  came  nearer,  and  wild  torch- 
light flared  through  the  high  windows  and  proved  the 
fatal  object  of  the  raid.  The  groans  of  a  few  easily  des- 
patched sentinels,  the  absence  of  any  serious  opposition 
or  stand  in  defense,  the  horrible  discovery  of  bolts  and 
bars  removed  and  the  King  at  the  mercy  of  his  enemies, 
must  have  followed  in  a  few  terrible  moments.  No  inci- 
dent in  history  is  better  known  than  that  piteous  attempt 
of  one  distracted  girl,  a  Douglas,  born  of  a  heroic  race, 
to  bar  the  door  with  her  own  slim  arm,  thrusting  it 
through  the  holdfasts  from  which  the  bolt  had  been  taken 
away  :  poor  ineffectual  bar  !  yet  enough  to  gain  a  moment 
when  moments  were  so  precious,  and  while  there  was 
still  a  chance  of  saving  the  King. 


68  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

The  narrative  of  the  death  struggle,  and  the  distracted 
attempts  to  find  a  place  of  concealment  for  the  victim, 
are  too  heartrending  to  be  repeated  here.  James  fell,  it 
is  said,  with  sixteen  wounds  in  him,  hacked  almost  to 
pieces,  yet  facing  his  murderers  so  desperately  that  some 
of  them  bore  the  marks  of  his  dying  grip  when  they  were 
brought  to  the  scaffold  to  be  killed  in  their  turn  with 
every  circumstance  of  horror  conceivable  some  time  later. 
The  execution  of  these  miserable  traitors,  one  of  them 
the  King's  own  uncle  Athole,  took  place  at  Edinburgh 
for  the  greater  solemnity  and  terror  of  the  punishment, 
which  was  accomplished  by  every  kind  of  torture.  The 
Queen,  too,  after  the  horrible  scene  of  which  she  had 
been  a  witness,  and  almost  more  than  a  witness — for  she 
had  thrown  herself  before  her  husband  and  had  been 
wounded  in  the  terrible  struggle — gathered  her  children 
and  fled  to  Edinburgh  Castle  to  put  the  little  heir  of  the 
kingdom,  now  James  II.,  in  security.  The  hapless  child 
was  sadly  crowned  at  Holyrood  at  six  years  old,  with  a 
hastily  adapted  ceremonial,  the  first  of  many  such  disas- 
trous rites  to  come. 

The  time  of  James's  reign  had  been  one  of  rising  pros- 
perity throughout  the  realm.  Law  and  order  had  been 
established  in  recognized  courts  and  tribunals,  the  titles 
of  property  had  been  ascertained  and  secured,  not  without 
loss,  no  doubt,  to  many  arrogant  lords  who  had  seized 
upon  stray  land  without  any  lawful  title,  or  on  whom  it 
had  been  illegally  bestowed  during  the  Albany  reign — but 
to  the  general  confidence  and  safety.  And  the  condition  of 
the  people  had  no  doubt  improved  in  consequence.  It  is 
difficult  to  form  any  estimate  of  what  this  condition  was. 
All  foreign  witnesses  give  testimony  of  an  unpleasing 
kind,  and  represent  the  country  as  wretched,  squalid,  and 
uncivilized  :  but  on  the  other  hand  nothing  can  be  more 
unlike  this  report  than  the  most  valuable  and  uninten- 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  69 

tional  evidence  furnished  by  King  James's  own  poems, 
with  their  tale  of  village  merry-makings  and  frays  which 
convey  no  impression  of  abject  poverty,  nor  even  of  that 
rudest  level  of  life  where  material  wants  are  so  pressing 
as  to  exclude  all  lighter  thoughts.  "  On  Mayday,"  says 
King  James,  "  when  everybody  is  bound  to  Peblis  to  the 
play," 

"  At  Beltane  quhan  like  bodie  bownis 

To  Peblis  to  the  play, 
To  heir  the  singing  and  sweit  soundis, 

The  solace  suth  to  say. 
Be  firth  and  forest  furth  they  found, 

They  graythit  them  full  gay  ; 
God  wot  that  wald  they  do  that  stound, 

For  it  was  thair  feist  day 

They  said 

Of  Peblis  to  the  Play." 

All  the  lasses  of  the  west,  he  goes  on  to  tell  us,  were 
tip  at  cockcrow,  and  no  men  might  rest  for  the  chatter 
and  the  noise  of  their  preparations.  One  cried  that  her 
curch  was  not  starched  enough,  another  that  a  hood  was 
best,  another  bewailed  herself  as  "so  evil  sunburnt  "  that 
she  was  not  fit  to  be  seen.  The  young  folk  stream  along 
"  full  bold  "  with  the  bagpipes  blowing,  and  every  village 
adding  its  contingent,  "he  before  and  she  before  to  see 
which  was  most  gay." 

"  Some  said  that  they  were  mercat  folk, 
Some  said  the  Quene  of  May 

Was  cumit 
Of  Peblis  to  the  Play." 

"When  they  arrive  at  the  "  taverne  hous  "  they  give 
orders  that  the  board  be  served,  and  to  see  that  the  napery 
is  white,  "for  we  will  dyn  and  daunce."  At  "  Christis 
Kirk  on  the  Green  "  there  is  a  similar  description,  the 
lasses  coming  out  as  before,  "  weshen  clean,"  in  their  new 


70  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

gray  kirtles  "  well  prest  with  many  plaits/'  with  their 
gloves  of  doeskin  and  morocco  shoes.  All  these  incident- 
al traits,  and  the  atmosphere  of  the  merry  ballads,  though 
both  end  in  a  fray,  contradict  with  vigor  the  cold  and 
wretched  picture  given  by  outsiders  of  a  country  where 
the  people  warmed  themselves  by  burning  sulphureous 
stones  dug  out  of  the  ground,  where  the  houses  had  a 
cow's  hide  stretched  for  a  door,  and  all  was  squalid  misery 
and  nakedness.  There  was  plenty  of  fighting  going  on  it 
is  evident — not  a  lowland  fair  without  its  broken  heads 
(a  habit  that,  according  to  Sir  Walter  Scott,  no  mean 
authority,  lasted  into  the  nineteenth  century) — and  much 
oppression,  the  great  lords  reigning  like  absolute  tyrants 
in  the  midst  of  subjects  without  resource  or  protection  ; 
but  the  case  of  the  peasantry  notwithstanding  all  these 
evils  does  not  seem  to  have  been  a  bad  one.  A  certain 
vigorous  capacity  of  revival,  which  history  shows  us 
continually  as  existing  on  the  broad  level  of  the  soil,  must 
have  brought  them  back  to  rough  ease  and  comfort,  and 
the  freedom  of  the  natural  healthful  atmosphere  which 
makes  itself  apparent  in  transcripts  of  life  so  little  likely 
to  be  forced  or  optimistic.  In  all  times  and  circumstances 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  amount  of  simple  enjoy- 
ment to  be  got  out  of  life,  especially  by  the  young,  who 
form  at  least  the  half  of  every  community,  far  exceeds 
the  elements  of  wellbeing  which  outsiders  see  in  it.  And 
the  protection  of  the  Church,  the  comparative  quiet  to 
be  enjoyed  on  church  lands,  the  charities  and  succor  of 
the  cloister,  must  have  made  an  incalculable  addition 
to  the  possibilities  of  existence.  Everything  in  James's 
reign  was  calculated  to  increase  the  stability  and  good 
order  which  are  the  best  guarantees  of  national  life  ;  even 
his  severities  cultivating  a  sense  of  security  in  the  weak 
and  a  wholesome  consciousness  of  the  necessity  of  self- 
restraint  in  the  strong.  For  the  first  time  for  many 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  71 

generations  the  nobles  were  kept  within  bounds,  and  ex- 
ceptional cruelties  became  if  not  impossible,  yet  of  so 
certain  discovery  and  punishment  that  lesser  tyrants  at 


HOLYKOOD. 

least  must  have  trembled.  The 
law  that  might  makes  right  fell 
into  temporary  disuse,  and  a  bet- 
ter law,  that  of  the  courts  that 
sat  periodically  over  all  the  king- 
dom, and — appealing  still  more 
strongly  to  the  imagination — a 
king  that  shut  his  ears  to  no  petition  and  interfered 
with  a  strong  hand  to  right  the  wronged,  began  a  new 
era  for  the  commonalty  of  Scotland.  Even  the  unfavor- 
able description  so  often  quoted  of  Eneas  Silvius,  reports 
the  common  people  as  having  "abundance  of  flesh  and 
fish,"  no  small  ingredient  of  wellbeing,  and  records  rather 
a  complete  absence  of  luxuries  than  that  want  which 


72  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

reduces  the  vital  strength  of  a  nation.  The  same  author- 
ity tells  of  exportations  of  "  hides,  wool,  salt  fish,  and 
pearls,"  the  latter  a  curious  item,  although  there  were  as 
yet  no  manufactures,  and  even  such  necessaries  as  horse- 
shoes and  every  kind  of  harness  had  to  be  imported  from 
Flanders.  But  the  Scots  in  their  farmhouses  and  cot- 
tages made  the  cloth  with  which  they  were  clothed,  and 
their  "blew caps/' the  well-known  blue  bonnet  which  has 
lasted  to  our  own  days.  And  they  retained  the  right 
which,  according  to  her  monkish  chronicler,  St.  Margaret 
had  been  the  first  to  secure  for  them — of  immunity  from 
all  military  requisitions,  and  even,  which  is  a  curious 
contradiction  of  the  supposed  tyrannies  of  the  nobles, 
held  an  absolute  property  in  their  own  goods  which  out 
of  the  island  of  Great  Britain  no  peasantry  in  the  world 
possessed.  The  French  allies  who  were  in  Scotland  in 
the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century  were  struck  with  angry 
consternation  to  hear  themselves  hailed  by  a  set  of  clod- 
hoppers, and  bidden  to  keep  the  paths  and  not  trample 
down  the  growing  corn,  and  to  find  that,  however  will- 
ing the  Scots  men-at-arms  might  be  to  harry  England 
when  occasion  offered,  not  the  greatest  lord  in  the  French 
contingent  could  carry  off  a  cow  or  a  brace  of  pullets  with- 
out compensation.  We  cannot  but  think  that  the  country 
in  which  the  peasant's  barnyard  was  thus  defended  was 
at  least  as  forward  in  the  best  elements  of  civilization  as 
those  in  which  there  were  hangings  of  arras  and  trenches 
of  silver,  but  no  security  for  anything  in  homesteads  or 
workshop  which  might  be  coveted  by  the  seigneur. 

Edinburgh,  as  has  been  said,  never  seems  to  have  been 
a  favorite  habitation  of  this  enlightened  and  accomplished 
Prince.  Perhaps  Queen  Jane  found  the  east  winds  too 
keen  on  the  heights,  or  the  Abbey  of  the  Holy  Rood  too 
low  in  the  valley.  The  heir  was  born  there  it  is  true, 
and  we  have  note  of  various  Parliaments  and  visits,  but 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  73 

no  settled  residence  in  the  capital.  One  incident  is  men- 
tioned by  the  chroniclers  which  must  have  afforded  a 
picturesque  scene,  when  the  King  himself  presided, 
before  the  gates  of  Edinburgh  Castle,  at  a  duel  between 
a  knight  called  Henry  Knokkis  or  Knox  (curious  precur- 
sor in  the  dimness  of  distance  of  another  of  his  name  !), 
who  had  been  accused  by  an  Edinburgh  burgess  of  treason- 
able speeches  against  the  King — and  his  accuser.  But 
who  this  accuser  was,  and  by  what  privilege  he  Avas  al- 
lowed to  meet  a  gentleman  and  knight  in  single  combat 
we  have  110  information.  Perhaps  he  was  himself  of  noble 
blood,  a  younger  son,  a  man  before  his  time,  seeking  the 
peaceful  profits  of  trade  instead  of  those  of  the  marauder, 
as  it  has  become  the  fashion  of  a  later  age  to  do.  It  is 
almost  impossible  not  to  fancy  that  there  must  have  been 
a  touch  of  the  burlesque  in  this  combat,  which  James 
himself  interfered  to  stop,  separating  the  combatants. 
He  was  very  careless  it  would  seem  of  treasonable  speeches, 
apt  to  treat  them  lightly  and  very  probably  smiled  a  little 
at  the  zeal  of  the  citizen  who  was  more  jealous  of  his  honor 
than  he  was  himself.  The  platform  before  the  gates  would 
still  make  a  splendid  area  for  any  feat  of  arms,  if  the  winds 
did  not  interfere  before  the  King  and  blow  the  combatants 
away :  and  the  old-world  crowd  with  their  many  colors, 
the  jerkins  slashed  and  embroidered  with  the  blazon  of 
all  the  great  families  in  Scotland,  the  plumed  caps  and 
dazzling  helmets  of  courtier  and  knight,  the  border  of 
blue  bonnets  outside,  and  all  the  shining  array  of  fair 
ladies  around  and  behind  the  throne,  would  present  a 
more  striking  picture  than  the  best  we  could  do  nowa- 
days. Let  us  hope  the  sun  shone  and  warmed  the  keen 
clear  air,  and  threw  into  high  relief  the  towers  and  bas- 
tions against  the  northern  blue. 

Edinburgh  by  this  time  had  grown  into  the  proportions 
of  a  town.     The  houses  which  the  citizens  had  the  priv- 


74  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

ilege  of  building  within  the  castle  precincts  would  appear 
to  have  been  low,  to  secure  the  protection  of  the  walls  ; 
and  by  certain  precautionary  regulations  for  their  preser- 
vation from  fire  it  would  seem  that  many  of  them  weiv 
still  thatched.  The  King's  residence  there,  judging  from 
the  straitened  accommodation,  which  was  all  that  existed 
in  a  much  more  advanced  period,  must  have  been  small 
and  poor,  though  there  already  existed  a  Parliament  Hall, 
in  which  probably  other  great  assemblies  were  held.  The 
city  walls  were  continued  along  the  crest  of  the  ridge  in 
narrow  lines,  deflecting  a  little  only  on  the  south  side, 
where  the  limits  were  broken  by  several  wealthy  and  well- 
cultivated  enclosures  where  brotherhoods  were  established 
— "White  and  Black  Friars,  sons  of  Augustine  and  Dominic, 
with  their  great  detached  houses,  their  gardens  always 
an  example  of  husbandry,  and  chapels  filling  the  air  with 
pleasant  sound  of  bells.  King  James  had  himself  en- 
dowed, besides  many  existing  foundations,  a  monastery 
for  the  Franciscans  or  Gray  Friars,  which  has  always  con- 
tinued, to  be  one  of  the  chief  ecclesiastic  centers  of  Edin- 
burgh. It  was  so  fine  a  building,  as  the  story  goes,  that 
the  humble-minded  Minors  declined  at  first  to  take  pos- 
session of  it  as  being  too  magnificent  for  an  Order  vowed 
to  poverty  ;  though  as  their  superior  was  a  monk  from 
Cologne,  sent  for  by  the  King  on  account  of  his  learn- 
ing and  sanctity,  and  accustomed  to  the  great  convents 
of  the  Continent,  such  an  objection  is  curious.  On  the 
south  side  of  the  town,  at  some  distance  outside  the  walls, 
on  the  platform  afterwards  occupied  by  the  buildings  of 
the  old  High  School,  stood  amid  its  blossoming  gardens 
the  Church  of  St.  Mary  in  the  Field,  afterwards  so  fatally 
known  as  the  Kirk  of  Field,  a  great  house  so  extensive 
and  stately  that  it  had  already  served  on  several  occasions 
as  a  royal  lodging.  St.  Giles's,  one  of  the  oldest  founds 
tions  of  all,  'stood  among  its  graves,  at  the  foot  of  the 


JAMES  I.  POET  AND  LEGISLATOR.  75 

Castle  Hill  in  the  center  of  the  life  of  ancient  Edinburgh, 
as  it  does  still.  These  clusters  of  sacred  buildings,  encir- 
cled by  their  orchards  and  gardens,  made  a  fringe  of  ver- 
dure, of  charity  and  peace,  sanctuaries  for  the  living  and 
resting-places  for  the  dead,  round  the  strong  and  dark  for- 
tifications of  the  little  royal  town,  which  hitherto  had 
held  for  its  life  upon  that  ridge  of  rock,  a  dangerous 
eminence  lying  full  in  every  invader's  way. 


CHAPTER  II. 

JAMES  II  :  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE. 

IT  is  clear  that  the  public  opinion  of  Scotland,  so  far  as 
there  was  such  a  thing  in  existence,  had  no  sympathy 
whatever  with  the  murderers  of  James.  The  instruments 
of  that  murder  were  in  the  first  place  Highland  caterans, 
with  whom  no  terms  were  ever  held  and  against  whom 
every  man's  hand  was  armed.  And  the  leaders  who  had 
taken  advantage  of  these  wild  allies  against  their  natural 
monarch  and  kindred  were  by  the  very  act  put  beyond 
the  pale  of  sympathy.  They  were  executed  ferociously 
and  horribly,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  time,  the 
burghers  of  Perth  rising  at  once  in  pursuit  of  them,  and 
the  burghers  of  Edinburgh  looking  on  with  stern  satis- 
faction at  their  tortures — these  towns  feeling  prof oundly, 
more  perhaps  than  any  other  section  of  the  community, 
the  extraordinary  loss  they  had  in  the  able  and  vigorous 
King,  already,  like  his  descendant  and  successor,  the 
King  of  the  commons,  their  stay  and  encouragement. 
If  there  was  among  the  nobility  less  lamentation  over  a 
ruler  who  spared  none  of  them  on  account  of  his  race, 
and  was  sternly  bent  on  repressing  all  abuse  of  power,  it 
was  silent  in  the  immense  and  universal  horror  with  which 
the  event  filled  Scotland.  It  would  seem  probable  that 
the  little  heir,  only  six  years  old,  the  only  son  of  King 
James,  was  not  with  his  parents  in  their  Christmas  re- 
joicings at  Perth,  but  had  been  left  behind  at  Holyrood, 
for  we  are  told  that  the  day  after  his  father's  death  the 
76 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  ft 

poor  little   wondering   child  was   solemnly  but  hastily 


EDINBURGH   CASTLE   FROM   THE   SOUTHWEST. 

crowned  there,  the  dreadful  news  having  flown  to  the 
center  of  government.     He   was  "crownd    by  the  no- 


78  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

bilitie,"  says  Pitscottie,  the  great  nobles  who  were  nearest 
and  within  reach  having  no  doubt  rushed  to  the  spot 
where  the  heir  was,  to  guard  and  also  to  retain  in  their 
own  hands  the  future  King.  He  was  proclaimed  at  once, 
and  the  crown,  or  such  substitute  for  it  as  could  be  laid 
sudden  hands  upon,  put  011  his  infant  head.  The  scene 
is  one  which  recurred  again  and  again  in  the  history  of 
his  race,  yet  nothing  can  take  from  it  its  touching  fea- 
tures. At  six  years  old  even  the  intimation  of  a  father's 
death,  especially  when  taking  place  at  a  distance,  would 
make  but  a  transitory  impression  upon  the  mind  ;  yet  we 
may  well  imagine  the  child  taken  from  his  toys,  wrapped 
from  head  to  foot  in  some  royal  mantle,  with  a  man's 
crown  held  over  his  baby  head,  receiving  with  large  eyes 
of  wonder  and  fright  easily  translated  into  tears,  the 
sacred  oil,  the  scepter  which  his  little  fingers  could 
scarcely  enclose.  Alas  for  the  luckless  Stewarts  !  again 
and  again  this  affecting  ceremony  took  place  before  the 
time  of  their  final  promotion  which  was  the  precursor  of 
their  overthrow.  They  were  all  kings  almost  from  their 
cradle — kings  ill-omened,  entering  upon  their  royalty  with 
infant  terror  and  tears. 

When  they  had  crowned  the  little  James,  second  of  the 
name,  the  lords  held  a  convention  "to  advise  whom  they 
thought  most  able  both  for  manheid  and  witt  to  take 
the  government  of  the  commonwealth  in  hand."  They 
chose  two  men  for  this  office,  neither  of  whom  was  taken 
from  a  very  great  family,  or  had,  so  far  as  can  be  known, 
any  special  importance — Sir  Alexander  Livingstone,  de- 
scribed as  Knight  of  Callender,  and  Sir  William  Crich- 
ton,  Chancellor  of  Scotland.  Perhaps  it  was  one  of  the 
compromises  which  are  so  common  when  parties  are 
nearly  equal  in  power  which  thus  placed  two  personages 
of  secondary  importance  at  the  head  of  affairs  :  but  any 
advantage  which  might  have  been  secured  by  this  selec- 


JAMES  H.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  79 

tion  was  neutralized  by  the  division  of  power,  which 
added  to  all  the  evils  of  an  interregnum  the  perplexity  of 
two  centers  of  government,  so  that  "  no  man  knew/'  as 
says  Pitscottie,  "whom  he  should  obey."  One  of  the 
Kegents  reigned  in  Edinburgh,  the  other  in  Stirling — 
one  had  the  advantage  of  holding  possession  of  the  King, 
the  other  had  the  doubtful  good  of  the  support  of  the 
Queen.  It  may  be  imagined  what  an  extraordinary  con- 
trast this  was  to  the  firm  and  vigilant  sway  of  a  monarch 
in  the  fulness  of  manhood,  with  all  the  prestige  of  his 
many  gifts  and  accomplishments,  his  vigorous  and  man- 
ful character  and  his  unquestioned  right  to  the  govern- 
ment and  obedience  of  the  country.  It  had  been  hard 
work  enough  for  James  I.,  with  all  these  advantages,  to 
keep  his  kingdom  well  in  hand :  and  it  would  not  be 
easy  to  exaggerate  the  difficulties  now,  with  two  rival 
and  feeble  powers,  neither  great  enough  to  overawe  nor 
united  enough  to  hold  in  check  the  independent  power 
of  the  great  houses  which  vied  with  each  other  in  the  dis- 
play of  dominion  and  wealth.  In  a  very  brief  time  all 
the  ground  gained  by  King  James  was  lost  again.  Every 
element  of  anarchy  arose  in  new  force,  and  if  it  had  been 
hard  to  secure  the  execution  of  the  laws  which  would 
have  been  so  good  had  they  been  kept  in  the  time  when 
their  chief  administrator  was  the  King  himself,  it  may 
be  supposed  what  was  the  difficulty  now,  when,  save  in  a 
little  circuit  round  each  seat  of  authority,  there  was  vir- 
tually no  power  at  all.  Pitscottie  gives  a  curious  and 
vivid  picture  of  the  state  of  affairs  in  this  lamentable 
interval. 

"  In  the  mean  time  many  great  dissensions  rose  amongst  us, 
but  it  was  uncertain  who  were  the  movers,  or  by  what  occasion 
the  chancellor  exercised  such  office,  further  than  became  him. 
He  keeped  both  the  Castle  of  Edinburgh  and  also  our  young 
King  thereintill,  who  was  committed  to  his  keeping  by  the  haill 


80  ROYAL  EDINGURGH. 

nobilitie  and  ane  great  part  of  the  noble  men  assisted  to  his 
opinion.  Upon  the  other  side,  Sir  Alexander  Livingstoun  bear- 
ing the  authoritie  committed  to  him  by  consent  of  the  nobilitie, 
as  said  is,  contained  another  faction,  to  whose  opinion  the  Queen 
mother  with  many  of  the  nobility  very  trewly  assisted.  So  the 
principals  of  both  the  factions  caused  proclaime  lettres  at  mer- 
cat  crosses  and  principal  villages  of  the  realm  that  all  men 
should  obey  conforme  to  the  aforesaid  letters  sent  forth  by  them, 
under  the  pain  of  death.  To  the  which  no  man  knew  to  whom 
he  should  obey  or  to  whose  letters  he  should  be  obedient  unto. 
And  also  great  trouble  appeared  in  this  realm,  because  there 
was  no  man  to  defend  the  burghs,  priests,  and  poor  men  and 
labourers  hauntind  to  their  leisum  (lawful)  business  either 
private  or  public.  These  men  because  of  their  enormities  might 
not  travel  for  thieves  and  brigands  and  such  like  :  all  other 
weak  and  decrepit  persons  who  was  unable  to  defend  them- 
selves, or  yet  to  get  food  and  sustentation  to  themselves,  were 
most  cruelly  vexed  in  such  troublous  times.  For  when  any 
passed  to  seek  redress  at  the  Chancellor  of  such  injuries  and 
troubles  sustained  by  them,  the  thieves  and  brigands,  feigning 
themselves  to  be  of  another  faction,  would  burn  their  house  and 
carry  their  whole  goods  and  gear  away  before  ever  they  returned 
again.  And  the  same  mischief  befell  those  that  went  to  com- 
plain to  the  Governor  of  the  oppression  done  to  them.  Some 
other  good  men  moved  upon  consideration  and  pitie  of  their 
present  calamities  tholed  (endured)  many  such  inquiries,  and 
contained  themselves  at  home  and  sought  no  redresse.  In  the 
midst  of  these  things  and  troubles,  all  things  being  out  of  order, 
Queen-Mother  began  to  find  out  ane  moyane  (a  means)  how  she 
should  diminish  the  Chancellor's  power  and  augment  the  Gov- 
ernor's power,  whose  authority  she  assisted." 

The  position  of  Queen  Jane  in  the  circumstances  in 
which  her  husband  left  her,  a  woman  still  young,  with  a 
band  of  small  children,  and  no  authority  in  the  turbulent 
and  distracted  country,  is  as  painful  a  one  as  could  well 
be  imagined.  Her  English  blood  would  be  against  her, 
and  even  her  beauty,  so  celebrated  by  her  chivalrous  hus- 
band, and  which  would  no  doubt  increase  the  immediate 
impulse  of  suitors,  in  that  much-marrying  age,  towards  the 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  81 

beautiful  widow  who  was  of  royal  blood  to  begin  with  and 
still  bore  the  title  of  Queen.  That  she  seems  to  have 
had  no  protection  from  her  royal  kindred  is  probably  ex- 
plained by  the  fact  that  Henry  VI.  was  never  very  potent 
or  secure  upon  his  throne,  and  that  the  Wars  of  the 
Roses  were  threatening  and  demanding  the  whole  atten- 
tion of  the  English  Government.  Wounded  in  her  efforts 
to  protect  her  husband  by  her  own  person,  seeing  him 
slaughtered  before  her  eyes,  there  could  not  be  a  more 
terrible  moment  in  any  woman's  life,  hard  as  were  the 
lives  of  women  in  that  age  of  violence,  than  that  which 
passed  over  Jane  Beaufort's  head  in  the  Blackfriars  Mon- 
astery amid  the  blood  and  tumult  of  that  fatal  night. 
The  chroniclers,  occupied  by  matters  more  weighty,  have 
no  time  to  picture  the  scene  that  followed  that  cruel  and 
horrible  murder,  when  the  distracted  women,  who  were 
its  only  witnesses,  after  the  tumult  and  the  roar  of  the 
murderers  had  passed  by,  were  left  to  wash  the  wounds 
and  compose  the  limbs  of  the  dead  King  so  lately  taking 
his  part  in  their  evening's  pastime,  and  to  look  to  the 
injuries  of  the  Queen  and  the  torn  and  broken  arm  of 
Catherine  Douglas,  a  sufferer  of  whom  history  has  no 
further  word  to  say.  The  room  with  its  imperfect  lights 
rises  before  us,  the  wintry  wind  rushing  in  by  those  wide- 
open  doors,  waving  about  the  figures  on  the  tapestry  till 
they  too  seemed  to  mourn  and  lament  with  wildly  tossing 
arms  the  horror  of  the  scene — the  cries  and  clash  of  arms 
as  the  caterans  fled,  pausing  no  doubt  to  pick  up  what 
scattered  jewels  or  rich  garments  might  lie  in  their  way  : 
and  by  the  wild  illumination  of  a  torch,  or  the  wavering 
leaping  flame  of  the  fagot  on  the  hearth,  the  two 
wounded  ladies  each  with  an  anxious  group  about  her — 
the  Queen,  covered  with  her  own  and  her  husband's 
blood  ;  the  girl,  with  her  broken  wrist,  lying  near  the 
threshold  which  she  had  defended  with  all  her  heroic 
6 


82  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

might.  They  were  used  to  exercise  the  art  of  -healing,  to 
bind  up  wounds  and  bring  back  consciousness,  these  hap- 
less ladies,  so  constantly  the  victims  of  passion  and  ambi- 
tion. But  amid  all  the  horrors  which  they  had  to  witness 
in  their  lives,  horrors  in  which  they  did  not  always  take 
the  healing  part,  there  could  be  none  more  appalling 
than  this.  Neither  then  nor  now,  however,  is  it  at  the  most 
terrible  moment  of  life,  when  the  revolted  soul  desires  it 
most,  that  death  comes  to  free  the  sufferer.  The  Queen 
lived,  no  doubt,  to  think  of  the  forlorn  little  boy  in  Holy- 
rood,  the  five  little  maidens  who  were  dependent  upon 
her,  and  resumed  the  burden  of  life  now  so  strangely  dif- 
ferent, so  dull  and  blank,  so  full  of  alarms  and  struggles. 
Her  elder  child,  the  little  Princess  Margaret,  had  been 
sent  to  France  three  or  four  years  before,  at  the  age  of 
ten,  to  be  the  bride  of  the  Dauphin — a  great  match  for  a 
Scottish  princess — and  it  is  possible  that  her  next  sister, 
Eleanor,  who  afterwards  married  the  Due  de  Bretagne, 
had  accompanied  Margaret — two  little  creatures  solitary 
in  their  great  promotion,  separated  from  all  who  held 
them  dear.  But  the  four  infants  who  were  left  would  be 
burden  enough  for  the  mother  in  her  unassured  and  un- 
protected state.  It  would  seem  that  she  was  not  permitted 
to  be  with  her  boy,  probably  because  of  the  jealousy  of 
the  Lords,  who  would  have  no  female  Eegent  attempting 
to  reign  in  the  name  of  her  son  :  but  had  fixed  her  resi- 
dence in  Stirling  under  the  shield  of  Livingstone,  who  as 
Governor  of  the  kingdom  ought  to  have  exercised  all  the 
functions  of  the  Regency,  and  especially  the  most  weighty 
one,  that  of  training  the  King.  Crichton,  however,  who 
was  Chancellor,  had  been  on  the  spot  when  James  II.  was 
crowned,  and  had  secured  his  guardianship  by  the  might  of 
the  strong  hand,  if  no  other,  removing  him  to  Edinburgh 
Castle,  where  he  could  be  kept  safe  under  watch  and  ward. 
The  Queen,  who  would  seem  to  have  been  throughout  of 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  83 

Livingstone's  faction,  and  who  no  doubt  desired  to  have 

san;si&v 


INNER  BARRIER,   EDINBURGH  CASTLE. 


her  son  with  her,  both  from  affection  and  policy,  set  her 
wits  to  discover  a  "  moyane,"  as  the  chroniclers  say  of 


84  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

recovering  the  custody  of  the  boy.  The  moyane  was 
simple  and  primitive  enough,  and  might  well  have  been 
pardoned  to  a  mother  deprived  of  her  natural  rights  : 
but  it  shows  at  the  same  time  the  importance  attached 
to  the  possession  of  the  little  King  when  it  was  only 
in  such  a  way  that  he  could  be  secured.  Queen  Jane 
set  out  from  Stirling  "  with  a  small  train  "  to  avert  sus- 
picion, and  appeared  at  the  gates  of  Edinburgh  Castle 
suddenly,  without  warning  as  would  seem,  asking  to  be 
admitted  to  see  her  son.  The  Chancellor,  wise  and  wily 
as  he  was,  would  appear  to  have  acknowledged  the  natural- 
ness of  this  request,  and  "received  her,"  the  chronicler 
says,  "  with  gladness,  and  gave  her  entrance  to  visit  her 
young  son,  and  gave  command  that  whensoever  the  Queen 
came  to  the  castle  it  should  be  patent  to  Her  Grace." 
Jane  entered  the  castle  accordingly,  with  many  protesta- 
tions of  her  desire  for  peace  and  anxiety  to  prevent  dissen- 
sions, all  which  was,  no  doubt,  true  enough,  though  the 
chroniclers  treat  her  protestations  with  little  faith,  declar- 
ing her  to  have  "very  craftilie  dissembled"  in  order  to 
dispel  any  suspicion  the  Chancellor  may  have  entertained. 
It  would  seem  that  she  had  not  borne  any  friendship  to 
him  beforehand,  and  that  her  show  of  friendship  now  re- 
quired explanation.  However  that  might  be,  she  suc- 
ceeded in  persuading  Crichton  of  her  good  faith,  and  was 
allowed  to  have  free  intercourse  with  her  son  and  regain 
her  natural  place  in  his  affections.  How  long  they  had 
been  separated  there  is  no  evidence  to  show,  but  it  could 
scarcely  be  difficult  for  the  mother  to  recover,  even  had 
it  fallen  into  forgetfulness,  the  affection  of  her  child. 
When  she  had  remained  long  enough  in  the  castle  to  dis- 
arm any  prejudices  Crichton  might  entertain  of  her,  and 
to  persuade  the  little  King  to  the  device  which  was  to 
secure  his  freedom,  the  Queen  informed  the  Chancellor 
that  she  was  about  to  make  a  pilgrimage  to  the  famous 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  85 

shrine  of  Whitekirk,  "  the  white  kirk  of  Brechin,"  Pits- 
cottie  says,  in  order  to  pray  for  the  repose  of  the  soul  of 
her  husband  and  the  prosperity  of  her  son,  and  asked  per- 
mission to  carry  away  two  coffers  with  her  clothes  and 
ornaments,  probably  things  which  she  had  left  in  the 
castle  before  her  widowhood,  and  that  means  of  convey- 
ance might  be  provided  for  these  possessions  to  Leith, 
where  she  was  to  embark.  This  simple  request  was  eas- 
ily granted,  and  the  two  coffers  carried  out  of  the  castle, 
and  conveyed  by  "  horss"  to  the  ship  in  which  she  her- 
self embarked  with  her  few  attendants.  But  instead  of 
turning  northward  Queen  Jane's  ship  sailed  up  the  Firth, 
through  the  narrow  strait  at  Queensferry,  past  Borrow- 
stounness,  where  the  great  estuary  widens  out  once  more, 
into  the  quiet  waters  of  the  Forth,  winding  through  the 
green  country  to  Stirling  on  its  hill.  She  was  "  a  great 
pairt  of  the  water  upward  before  ever  the  keepers  of  the 
castle  could  perceive  themselves  deceived, "says  Pitscottie. 
As  the  ship  neared  Stirling,  the  Governor  of  the  kingdom 
came  out  of  the  castle  with  all  his  forces,  with  great  joy 
and  triumph,  and  received  the  King  and  his  mother. 
For  one  of  the  coffers,  so  carefully  packed  and  accounted 
for,  contained  no  less  an  ornament  than  the  little  King 
in  person,  to  whose  childish  mind  no  doubt  this  mode  of 
transport  was  a  delightful  device  and  pleasantry.  One 
can  imagine  how  the  Queen's  heart  must  have  throbbed 
with  anxiety  while  her  son  lay  hidden  in  the  bed  made  for 
him  within  the  heavy  chest,  where  if  air  failed,  or  any 
varlet  made  the  discovery  prematurely,  all  her  hopes 
would  have  come  to  an  end.  She  must  have  fluttered  like 
a  bird  over  her  young  about  the  receptacle  in  which  her 
boy  lay,  and  talked  with  her  ladies  over  his  head  to  en- 
courage and  keep  him  patient  till  the  end  of  the  journey 
was  near  enough,  amid  the  lingering  links  of  Forth,  to 
open  the  lid  and  set  him  free.  It  is  not  a  journey  that  is 


86  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

often  made  nowadays,  but  with  all  the  lights  of  the  morn- 
ing upon  Demayat  and  his  attendant  mountains,  and  the 
sun  shining  upon  that  rich  valley  and  the  river  at  its  lei- 
sure wending,  as  if  it  loved  them,  through  all  the  verdant 
holms  and  haughs,  there  is  no  pleasanter  way  of  travel- 
ing from  Edinburgh  to  Stirling,  the  two  hill-castles  of 
the  Scottish  crown. 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  think  that  Queen  Jane  meant 
something  more  than  the  mere  bolstering  up  of  one  faction 
against  another  in  the  distracted  kingdom  by  the  abduc- 
tion of  her  son.  It  is  very  possible  indeed  that  she  did 
so,  and  that  to  strengthen  the  hands  of  the  man  who  was 
really  Eegent-Governor  of  Scotland,  but  whose  power 
had  been  stolen  from  his  hands  by  the  unscrupulousness 
of  Crichton,  seemed  to  her  a  great  political  object,  and 
the  recovery  of  the  supreme  authority,  which  would  seem 
to  have  appeared  to  all  as  infallibly  linked  with  the  pos- 
session of  the  young  King,  of  the  greatest  importance. 
It  is  evident  it  was  considered  by  the  general  public  to  be 
so ;  but  there  is  something  pitiful  in  the  struggle  for  the 
poor  boy,  over  whose  small  person  those  fierce  factionaries 
fought,  and  in  whose  name,  still  so  innocent  and  help- 
less as  he  was,  so  many  ferocious  deeds  were  done. 

No  sooner  was  he  secure  in  Stirling  than  the  Governor 
called  together  a  convention  of  his  friends,  to  congratulate 
each  other  and  praise  the  wit  and  skill  of  "that  noble 
woman,  our  soverain  mother/'  who  had  thus  set  things 
right.  "  Whereby  I  understand/'  he  says  piously,  that  the 
wisest  man  is  not  at  all  times  the  sickerest,  nor  yet  the 
hardy  man  happiest,"  seeing  that  Crichton,  though  so 
great  and  sagacious  and  powerful,  should  be  thus  deceived 
and  brought  to  shame.  "Be  of  good  comfort  therefore," 
adds  this  enlightened  ruler  ;  "  all  the  mischief,  banish- 
ment, troubles,  and  vexation  which  the  Chancellor  thought 
to  have  done  to  us  let  us  do  the  like  to  him."  He  ended 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  87 

this  discourse  by  an  intimation  that  he  was  about  to  be- 
siege Edinburgh.  "  Let  us  also  take  up  some  band  of 
men-of-war,  and  every  man  after  his  power  send  secret 
messages  to  their  friends,  that  they  and  every  one  that 
favours  us  may  convene  together  quietly  in  Edinburgh 
earlie  in  the  morning,  so  that  the  Chancellor  should  not 
know  us  to  come  for  the  sieging  of  the  castle  till  we  have 
the  siege  even  belted  about  the  walls  ;  so  ye  shall  have 
subject  to  you  all  that  would  have  arrogantly  oppressed 
you." 

This  resolution  was  agreed  to  with  enthusiasm,  the 
Queen  undertaking  to  provision  the  army  "  out  of  her 
own  garners  "  ;  but  the  Governor  had  no  sooner  "  belted 
the  siege  about  the  castle,"  an  expression  which  renders 
most  graphically  the  surrounding  of  the  place,  than  the 
Chancellor,  taken  by  surprise,  prostrated  by  the  loss  of 
the  King,  and  finding  it  impossible  to  draw  the  powerful 
Earl  of  Douglas  to  his  aid,  made  overtures  of  submission, 
and  begged  for  a  meeting  "  in  the  fields  before  the  gates/' 
where,  with  a  few  chosen  friends  on  either  side,  the  two 
great  functionaries  of  the  kingdom  might  come  to  an 
agreement  between  themselves. 

By  this  time  there  would  seem  to  have  begun  that  pre- 
ponderating influence  of  the  Douglas  family  in  Scotland 
which  vexed  the  entire  reign  of  the  second  James,  and 
prompted  two  of  the  most  violent  and  tragic  deeds  which 
stain  the  record  of  Scottish  history.  James  I.  was  more 
general  in  his  attempt  at  the  repression  and  control  of  his 
fierce  nobility,  and  the  family  most  obnoxious  to  him  was 
evidently  that  of  his  uncle,  nearest  in  blood  and  most 
dangerous  to  the  security  of  the  reigning  race.  The 
Douglas,  however,  detaches  himself  in  the  following 
generation  into  a  power  and  place  unexampled,  and  which 
it  took  the  entire  force  of  Scotland,  arid  all  the  wavering 
and  uncertain  expedients  of  law,  as  well  as  the  more  de- 


88  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

cisive  action  of  violence  quite  lawless,  to  put  down. 
Whether  there  was  in  the  pretensions  of  this  great  house 
any  aim  at  the  royal  authority  in  their  own  persons,  or 
ambitious  assertion  of  a  rival  claim  in  right  of  the  blood  of 
Bruce,  which  was  as  much  in  their  veins  as  in  those  of  the 
Stewarts,  as  some  recent  historians  would  make  out,  it  is 
probably  now  quite  impossible  to  decide.  The  chroniclers 
say  nothing  of  any  such  intention,  nor  do  the  Douglases 
themselves,  who  throughout  the  struggle  never  hesitated 
to  make  submission  to  the  Crown  when  the  course  of 
fortune  went  against  them.  The  Chancellor  had  been 
deeply  stung,  it  is  evident,  by  the  answer  of  Douglas  to 
his  appeal,  in  which  the  fierce  Earl  declared  that  discord 
between  "you  twa  uiihappie  tyrants"  was  the  most 
agreeable  thing  in  the  world  to  him,  and  that  he  wished 
nothing  more  than  that  it  should  continue.  Deprived  of 
the  sanction  given  to  all  his  proceedings  by  the  name  of 
the  King,  outwitted  among  his  wiles,  and  exposed  to  the 
ridicule  even  of  those  who  had  regarded  his  wisdom  with 
most  admiration,  Crichton  would  seern  to  have  turned 
fiercely  upon  the  common  opponent,  perhaps  with  a  wise 
prescience  of  the  evil  to  come,  perhaps  only  to  secure  an 
object  of  action  which  might  avert  danger  from  himself 
and  bring  him  once  more  into  command  of  the  source  of 
authority — most  likely  with  both  objects  together,  the 
higher  and  lower,  as  is  most  general  in  our  mingled  nature. 
The  meeting  was  held  accordingly  outside  the  castle  gates, 
the  Chancellor  coming  forth  in  state  bearing  the  keys  of 
the  castle,  which  were  presented,  Buchanan  says,  to  the 
King  in  person,  who  accompanied  the  expedition,  and 
who  restored  the  great  functionary  to  his  office.-  The 
great  keys  in  the  child's  hand,  the  little  treble  pipe  in 
which  the  reappointrnent  would  be  made,  the  tiny  figure 
in  the  midst  of  all  these  plotters  and  warriors,  gives  a  touch 
of  pathos  to  the  many  pictorial  scenes  of  an  age  so  rich  in 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  89 

the  picturesque  ;  but  the  earlier  writers  say  nothing  of  the 
little  James's  presence.  There  was,  however,  a  consulta- 
tion between  the  two  Eegents,  and  Douglas's  letter  was 
read  with  such  angry  comments  as  may  be  supposed.  The 
Earl's  contempt  evidently  cut  deep,  and  strongly  em- 
phasized the  necessity  of  dealing  authoritatively  with 
such  a  high-handed  rebel  against  the  appointed  rulers. 

It  would  appear,  ho \vever,  that  little  could  be  done 
against  the  immediate  head  of  that  great  house,  and  the 
two  rulers,  though  they  had  made  friends  over  this  com- 
mon object,  had  to  await  their  opportunity,  and  in  the 
meantime  do  their  best  to  maintain  order  and  to  get  each 
the  chief  power  into  his  own  hands.  Crichton  found 
means  before  very  long  to  triumph  over  his  adversaries 
in  his  turn  by  rekidnapping  the  little  King,  for  whom  he 
laid  wait  in  the  woods  about  Stirling,  where  James  was 
permitted  precociously  to  indulge  the  passion  of  his  family 
for  hunting.  No  doubt  the  crafty  Chancellor  had  pleasant 
inducements  to  bring  forward  to  persuade  the  boy  to  a 
renewed  escape,  for  "  the  King  smiled,"  say  the  chron- 
iclers, probably  delighted  by  the  novelty  and  renewed 
adventure — the  glorious  gallop  across  country  in  the  dewy 
morning,  a  more  pleasant  prospect  than  the  previous  con- 
veyance in  his  mother's  big  chest.  Thus  in  a  few  hours 
the  balance  was  turned,  and  it  was  once  more  the  Chan- 
cellor and  not  the  Governor  who  could  issue  ordinances 
and  make  regulations  in  the  name  of  the  King. 

Nothing,  however,  could  be  more  tedious  and  trifling  in 
the  record  than  these  struggles  over  the  small  person  of 
the  child-king.  But  the  story  quickens  when  the  long- 
desired  occasion  arrived,  and  the  two  rulers,  rivals  yet 
partners  in  power,  found  opportunity  to  strike  the  blow 
upon  which  they  had  decided,  and  crush  the  great  family 
which  threatened  to  dominate  Scotland,  and  which  was  so 
contemptuous  of  their  own  sway.  The  great  Earl,  Duke  of 


90  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

Touraine,  almost  prince  at  home,  the  son  of  that  Douglas 
whose  valor  had  moved  England,  and  indeed  Christendom, 
to  admiration,  though  he  never  won  a  battle — died  in  the 
midst  of  his  years,  leaving  behind  him  two  young  sons  much 
under  age  as  the  representatives  of  his  name.  It  is  extra- 
ordinary to  us  to  realize  the  place  held  by  youth  in  those 
times,  when  one  would  suppose  a  man's  strength  peculiarly 
necessary  for  the  holdingof  an  even  nominal  position.  Mr. 
Church  has  just  shown  in  his  Life  of  Henry  V.  how  that 
prince  at  sixteen  led  armies  and  governed  provinces  ;  and 
it  is  clear  that  this  was  by  no  means  exceptional,  and 
that  the  right  of  boys  to  rule  themselves  and  their  pos- 
sessions was  universally  acknowledged  and  permitted. 
The  young  William,  Earl  of  Douglas,  is  said  to  have  been 
only  about  fourteen  at  his  father's  death.  He  was  but 
eighteen  at  the  time  of  his  execution,  and  between  these 
dates  he  appears  to  have  exercised  all  the  rights  of  in- 
dependent authority  without  tutor  or  guardian.  The 
position  into  which  he  entered  at  this  early  age  was  un- 
equalled in  Scotland,  in  many  respects  superior  to  that  of 
the  nominal  sovereign,  who  had  so  many  to  answer  to  for 
every  step  he  took — counselors  and  critics  more  plentiful 
than  courtiers.  The  chroniclers  report  all  manner  of 
vague  arrogancies  and  presumptions  on  the  part  of  the 
new  Earl.  He  held  a  veritable  court  in  his  castle,  very 
different  from  the  semi-prison  which,  whether  at  Eti:;i 
burgh  or  Stirling,  was  all  that  James  of  Scotland  had  for 
home  and  throne — and  conferred  fiefs  and  knighthood 
upon  his  followers  as  if  he  had  been  a  reigning  prince. 
"  The  Earl  of  Douglas,"  says  Pitscottie,  "  being  of  tender 
age,  was  puffed  up  with  new  ambition  and  greater  pride 
nor  he  was  before,  as  the  manner  of  youth  is  ;  and  also 
pridef  ul  tyrants  and  flatterers  that  were  about  him  through 
this  occasion  spurred  him  ever  to  greater  tyranny  and  op- 
pression." The  lawless  proceedings  of  the  young  poten- 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  91 

tate  would  seem  to  have  stirred  up  all  the  disorderly 
elements  in  the  kingdom.  His  own  wild  Border  county 
grew  wilder  than  ever,  without  control.  Feuds  broke  out 
over  all  the  country,  in  which  revenge  for  injuries  or  tradi- 
tionary quarrels  were  lit  up  of  the  strong  hope  in  every 
man's  breast  not  only  of  killing  his  neighbor,  but  taking 
possession  of  his  neighbor's  lands.  The  caterans  swarmed 
down  once  more  from  the  mountains  and  isles,  and  every 
petty  tyrant  of  a  robber  laird  threw  off  whatever  bond  of 
law  had  been  forced  upon  him  in  King  James's  golden 
days.  This  sudden  access  of  anarchy  was  made  more 
terrible  by  a  famine  in  the  country,  where  not  very  long 
before  it  had  been  reported  that  there  was  fish  and  flesh  for 
every  man.  "  A  great  dearth  of  victualls,  pairtly  because 
the  labourers  of  the  ground  might  not  sow  nor  win  the  corn 
through  the  tumults  and  cumbers  of  the  country,"  spread 
everywhere,  and  the  state  of  the  kingdom  called  the  con- 
flicting authorities  once  more  to  consultation  and  some 
attempt  at  united  action. 

The  meeting  this  time  was  held  in  St.  Giles's,  the 
metropolitan  church,  then,  perhaps,  scarcely  less  new 
and  shining  in  its  decoration  than  now,  though  with 
altars  glowing  in  all  the  shadowy  aisles  and  the  breath  of 
incense  mounting  to  the  lofty  roof.  There  would  not 
seem  to  have  been  any  prejudice  as  to  using  a  sacred 
place  for  such  a  council,  though  it  might  be  in  the  chap- 
ter-house or  some  adjacent  building  that  the  barons  met. 
It  is  to  be  hoped  that  they  did  not  go  so  far  as  to  put  into 
words  within  the  consecrated  walls  the  full  force  of  their 
intention,  even  if  it  had  come  to  be  an  intention  so  soon. 
There  was  but  a  small  following  on  either  side,  that 
neither  party  might  be  alarmed,  and  many  fine  speeches 
were  made  upon  the  necessity  of  concord  and  mutual  aid 
to  repress  tho  common  enemy.  The  Chancellor,  having 
restolen  the  King,  would  no  doubt  be  most  confident  in 


92  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

tone  ;  but  on  both  sides  there  were  equal  professions  of 
devotion  to  the  country,  and  so  many  admirable  senti- 
ments expressed,  that  "  all  their  friends  on  both  sides 
that  stood  about  began  to  extol  and  love  them  both,  with 
great  thanksgiving  that  they  both  regarded  the  common- 
wealth so  mickle  and  preferred  the  same  to  all  private 
quarrels  and  debates/'  The  decision  to  which  they  came 
was  to  call  a  Parliament,  at  which  aggrieved  persons 
throughout  the  country  might  appear  and  make  their 
complaints.  The  result  was  a  crowd  of  woful  com- 
plainants, "  such  as  had  never  been  seen  before.  There 
were  so  many  widows,  bairns,  and  infants  seeking  redress 
for  their  husbands,  kin,  and  friends  that  were  cruelly 
slain  by  wicked  murderers,  and  many  for  hireling  theft 
and  murder,  that  it  would  have  pitied  any  man  to  have 
heard  the  same."  This  clamorous  and  woful  crowd 
filled  the  courts  and  narrow  square  of  the  castle  before 
the  old  parliament-hall  with  a  murmur  of  misery  and 
wrath,  the  plaint  of  kin  and  personal  injury  more  sharp 
than  a  mere  public  grief.  The  two  rulers  and  their  coun- 
selors no  doubt  listened  with  grim  satisfaction,  feeling 
their  enemy  delivered  into  their  hands,  and  finding  a 
dreadful  advantage  in  the  youth  and  recklessness  of  the 
victims,  who  had  taken  no  precaution,  and  of  whom  it 
was  so  easy  to  conclude  that  they  were  "  the  principal 
cause  of  these  enormities."  Whether  their  determination 
to  sacrifice  the  young  Douglas,  and  so  crush  his  house, 
was  formed  at  once,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  Perhaps 
some  hope  of  molding  his  youth  to  their  own  purpose 
may  have  at  first  softened  the  intention  of  the  plotters. 
At  all  events  they  sent  him  complimentary  letters,  "  full 
of  colored  'and  pointed  words,"  inviting  him  to  Edin- 
burgh in  their  joint  names  with  all  the  respect  that  became 
his  rank  and  importance.  The  youth,  unthinking  in  his 
boyish  exaltation  of  any  possibility  of  harm  to  him, 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  93 

accepted  the  invitation  sent  to  him  to  visit  the  King  at 
Edinburgh,  and  accompanied  by  his  brother  David,  the 
only  other  male  of  his  immediate  family,  set  out  magnif- 
icently and  with  full  confidence  with  his  gay  train  of 
knights  and  followers — among  whom,  no  doubt,  the 
youthful  element  predominated — towards  the  capital. 
He  was  met  on  the  way  by  Crichton — evidently  an  accom- 
plished courtier,  and  full  of  all  the  habits  and  ways  of  di- 
plomacy— who  invited  the  cavalcade  to  turn  aside  and  rest 
for  a  day  or  two  in  Crichton  Castle,  where  everything  had 
been  prepared  for  their  reception.  Here  amid  all  the 
feastings  and  delights  the  great  official  discoursed  to  the 
young  noble  about  the  duties  of  his  rank  and  the  necessity 
of  supporting  the  King's  government  and  establishing 
the  authority  of  law  over  the  distracted  country,  sweet- 
ening his  sermon  with  protestations  of  his  high  regard 
for  the  Douglas  name,  whose  house,  kin,  and  friends  were 
more  dear  to  him  than  any  in  Scotland,  and  of  affection 
to  the  young  Earl  himself.  Perhaps  this  was  the  turning- 
point,  though  the  young  gallant  in  his  heyday  of  power 
and  self-confidence  was  all  unconscious  of  it ;  perhaps  he 
received  the  advice  too  lightly,  or  laughed  at  the  serious- 
ness of  his  counselor.  At  all  events,  when  the  gay  band 
took  horse  again  and  proceeded  towards  Edinburgh,  sus- 
picion began  to  steal  among  the  Earl's  companions.  Sev- 
eral of  them  made  efforts  to  restrain  their  young  leader, 
begging  him  at  least  to  send  back  his  young  brother 
David  if  he  would  not  himself  turn  homeward.  "  But," 
says  the  chronicler,  "the  nearer  that  a  man  be  to  peril  or 
mischief  he  runs  more  headlong  thereto,and  has  no  grace  to 
hear  them  that  gives  him  any  counsel  to  eschew  the  peril." 
The  only  result  of  these  attempts  was  that  the  party  of 
boys  spurred  on,  more  gaily,  more  confidently  than  ever, 
with  the  deceiver  at  their  side,  who  had  spoken  in  so  wise 
and  fatherly  a  tone,  giving  so  much  good  advice  to  the 


94  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

heedless  lads.  They  were  welcomed  into  Edinburgh 
within  the  fatal  walls  of  the  Castle  with  every  demonstra- 
tion of  respect  and  delight.  How  long  the  interval  was 
before  all  this  enthusiasm  turned  into  the  stern  prepara- 
tions of  murder  it  seems  impossible  to  say — it  might  have 
been  on  the  first  night  that  the  catastrophe  happened, 
for  anything  the  chroniclers  tell  us.  The  followers  of 
Douglas  were  carefully  got  away,  "  skailled  out  of  the 
town,"  sent  for  lodging  outside  the  castle  walls,  while  the 
two  young  brothers  Avere  marshaled,  as  became  their 
rank,  to  table  to  dine  with  the  King.  Whether  they 
suspected  anything,  or  whether  the  little  James  in  his 
helpless  innocence  had  any  knowledge  of  what  was  going 
to  happen,  it  is  impossible  to  tell.  The  feast  proceeded, 
a  royal  banquet  with  "all  delicatis  that  could  be  pro- 
cured." According  to  a  persistent  tradition,  the  signal 
of  fate  was  given  by  the  bringing  in  of  a  bull's  head,  which 
was  placed  before  the  young  Earl.  Mr.  Burton  considers 
this  incident  as  so  picturesque  as  to  be  merely  a  romantic 
addition  ;  but  no  symbol  was  too  boldly  picturesque  for 
the  time.  When  this  fatal  dish  appeared  the  two  young 
Douglases  seem  at  once  to  have  perceived  their  danger. 
They  started  from  the  table,  and  for  one  despairing 
moment  looked  wildly  round  them  for  some  way  of  escape. 
The  stir  and  commotion  as  that  tragic  company  started 
to  their  feet,  the  vain  shout  for  help,  the  clash  of  arms 
as  the  fierce  attendants  rushed  in  and  seized  the  victims, 
the  deadly  calm  of  the  two  successful  conspirators  who 
had  planned  the  whole,  and  the  pale  terrified  face  of  the 
boy-king,  but  ten  years  old  who  "grat  verie  sore,"  and 
vainly  appealed  to  the  Chancellor  for  God's  sake  to  let 
them  go,  make  one  of  the  most  impressive  of  historical 
pictures.  The  two  hapless  boys  were  dragged  out  to  the 
Castle  Hill,  which  amid  all  its  associations  has  none  more 
cruel,  and  there  beheaded  with  the  show  of  a  public  ex- 


EDINBURGH  CASTLE  FROM  THE  VENNEL.—  Page  94. 

Royal  Edinburgh. 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  95 

ecution,  which  made  the  treachery  of  the  crime  still  more 
apparent ;  for  it  had  been  only  at  most  a  day  or  two, 
perhaps  only  a  few  hours,  since  the  Earl  and  his  brother 
in  all  their  bravery  had  been  received  with  every  gratula- 
tion  at  these  same  gates,  the  welcome  visitors,  the  chosen 
guests,  of  the  King.  The  populace  would  do  little  but 
stare  in  startled  incapacity  to  interfere  at  such  a  scene  ; 
some  of  them,  perhaps,  sternly  satisfied  at  the  cutting  off 
of  the  tyrant  stock  ;  some  who  must  have  felt  the  pity  of 
it,  and  had  compunction  for  the  young  lives  cut  off  so 
suddenly.  A  more  cruel  vengeance  could  not  be  on  the 
sins  of  the  fathers,  for  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  the 
Eegents  did  not  take  advantage  of  the  youth  of  these 
representatives  of  the  famous  Douglas  race.  Older  and 
more  experienced  men  would  not  have  fallen  into  the 
snare,  or  at  all  events  would  have  retained  the  power  to 
sell  their  lives  dear. 

If  the  motives  of  Livingstone  and  Crichton  were  purely 
patriotic,  it  is  evident  that  they  committed  a  blunder  as 
well  as  a  crime  :  for  instead  of  two  boys  rash  and  ill-advised 
and  undeveloped  they  found  themselves  in  face  of  a  res- 
olute man  who,  like  the  young  king  of  Israel,  substituted 
scorpions  for  whips,  persecuting  both  of  them  without 
mercy,  and  finally  bringing  Livingstone  at  least  to  de- 
struction. The  first  to  succeed  to  William  Douglas  was 
his  uncle,  a  man  of  no  particular  account,  who  kept 
matters  quiet  enough  for  a  few  years  ;  but  when  his  son, 
another  William,  succeeded,  the  Regents  soon  became 
aware  that  an  implacable  and  powerful  enemy,  the  avenger 
of  his  two  young  kinsmen,  but  an  avenger  who  showed 
no  rash  eagerness  and  could  await  time  and  opportunity, 
was  in  their  way.  The  new  Earl  married  without  much 
ceremony,  though  with  a  papal  dispensation  in  conse- 
quence of  their  relationship,  the  little  Maid  of  Galloway, 
to  whom  a  great  part  of  the  Douglas  lands  had  gone  on 


96  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

the  death  of  her  brothers,  and  thus  united  once  more  the 
power  and  possessions  of  his  name.  He  was  himself  a 
young  man,  but  of  full  age,  no  longer  a  boy,  and  he 
would  seem  to  have  combined  with  much  of  the  steady 
determination  to  aggrandize  and  elevate  his  race  which 
was  characteristic  of  the  Douglases,  and  their  indifference 
to  commonplace  laws  and  other  people's  rights,  an  im- 
pulsiveness of  character,  and  temptation  towards  ostenta- 
tion and  display,  which  led  him  at  once  to  submission 
and  to  defiance  at  unexpected  moments,  and  gave  an  ele- 
ment of  uncertainty  to  his  career.  Soon  after  his  succes- 
sion it  would  seem  to  have  occurred  to  him,  after  some 
specially  unseemly  disputes  among  some  of  his  own 
followers,  that  to  get  himself  into  harmony  with 
the  laws  of  the  realm  and  gain  the  friendship  of  the 
young  King  would  be  a  good  thing  to  do.  He  came  ac- 
cordingly to  Stirling  where  James  was,  very  sick  of  his 
governors  and  their  wiles  and  struggles,  and  throwing 
himself  at  the  boy's  feet  offered  himself,  his  goods  and 
castles,  and  life  itself,  for  the  King's  service,  "  that  he 
might  have  the  license  to  wait  upon  His  Majesty  but  as 
the  soberest  courtier  in  the  King's  company,"  and  pro- 
claimed himself  ready  to  take  any  oath  that  might  be 
offered  to  him,  and  to  be  "  as  serviceable  as  any  man 
within  the  realm."  James,  it  would  seem,  was  charmed 
by  the  noble  suitor,  and  all  the  glamour  of  youth  and  im- 
pulse which  was  in  the  splendid  young  cavalier,  far  more 
great  and  magnificent  than  all  the  Livingstones  and  Crich- 
tons,  who  yet  came  with  such  abandon  to  the  foot  of  the 
throne  to  devote  himself  to  its  service.  He  not  only  for- 
gave Douglas  all  his  offenses,  but  placed  him  at  the  head 
of  his  government,  "  used  him  most  familiar  of  any  man," 
and  looked  up  to  him  with  the  half-adoring  admiration 
which  a  generous  boy  so  often  feels  towards  the  first  man 
who  becomes  his  hero. 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  9f 

This  happened  in  1443,  when  James  was  but  thirteen. 
It  would  be  as  easy  to  say  that  Douglas  displaced  with  a 
rush  the  two  more  successful  governors  of  the  kingdom, 
and  took  their  places  by  storm — and  perhaps  it  would  be 
equally  true  :  yet  it  would  be  vain  to  ignore  James  as  an 
actor  in  national  affairs  because  of  his  extreme  youth.  In 
an  age  when  a  boy  of  sixteen  leads  armies  and  quells  in- 
surrections, a  boy  of  thirteen,  trained  amid  all  the  ex- 
citing circumstances  which  surrounded  James  Stewart, 
might  well  have  made  a  definite  choice  and  acted  with 
full  royal  intention,  perhaps  not  strong  enough  to  be 
carried  out  by  its  own  impulse,  yet  giving  a  real  sanction 
and  force  to  the  power  which  an  elder  and  stronger  man 
was  in  a  position  to  wield.  We  have  no  such  means  of 
forming  an  idea  of  the  character  and  personality  of  the 
second  James  as  we  have  of  his  father.  Xo  voice  of  his 
sounds  in  immortal  accents  to  commemorate  his  loves  or 
his  sadness.  He  appears  first  passively  in  the  hands  of 
conspirators  who  played  him  in  his  childhood  one  against 
the  other,  a  poor  little  royal  pawn  in  the  big  game  which 
was  so  bloody  and  so  tortuous.  His  young  memory  must 
have  been  full  of  scares  and  of  guileful  expedients,  each 
party  and  individual  about  him  trying  to  circumvent  the 
other.  Never  was  child  brought  up  among  wilder  chances. 
The  bewildering  horror  of  his  father's  death,  the  sudden 
melancholy  coronation, and  all  the  nobles  in  their  sounding 
steel  kneeling  at  his  baby  feet,  which  would  be  followed 
in  his  experience  by  no  expansion  or  indulgence,  but  by 
the  confinement  of  the  castle  ;  the  terrible  loneliness  of 
an  imprisoned  child,  broken  after  awhile  by  the  sudden 
appearance  of  his  mother,  and  that  merry  but  alarming 
jest  of  his  conveyance  in  the  great  chest,  half  stifled  in 
the  folds  of  her  embroideries  and  cloth  of  gold.  Then 
another  flight,  and  renewed  stately  confinement  among 
his  old  surroundings,  monotony  broken  by  sudden  excite- 
7 


98  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

ments  and  the  babble  in  his  ears  of  uncomprehended 
politics,  from  which,  however,  his  mind,  sharpened  by 
the  royal  sense  that  these  mysterious  affairs  were  really 
his  own,  would  no  doubt  come  to  find  meaning  at  a  far  ear- 
lier age  than  could  be  possible  under  other  circumstances. 
And  then  that  terrible  scene,  most  appalling  of  all,  when 
he  had  to  look  on  and  see  the  two  lads,  not  so  much  older 
than  himself,  young  gallants,  so  brave  and  fine,  to  whom 
the  boy's  heart  would  draw  in  spite  of  all  he  might  have 
heard  against  them,  so  much  nearer  to  himself  than 
either  governor  or  chancellor,  those  two  noble  Douglases, 
suddenly  changed  under  his  eyes  from  gay  and  welcome 
guests  to  horrified  victims,  with  all  the  tragic  passion  of 
the  betrayed  and  lost  in  their  young  eyes.  Such  a  scene 
above  all  must  have  done  much  to  mature  the  intelligence 
of  a  boy  full  like  all  his  race  of  spirit  and  independence, 
and  compelled  to  look  on  at  so  much  which  he  could  not 
stop  or  remedy.  Thus  passive  and  helpless,  yet  with  the 
fiction  of  supremacy  in  his  name,  we  see  the  boy  only  by 
glimpses  through  the  tumultuous  crowd  about  him  with 
all  their  struggles  for  power,  until  suddenly  he  flashes 
forth  into  the  foreground,  the  chief  figure  in  a  scene 
more  violent  and  terrible  still  than  any  that  had  preceded 
it,  taking  up  in  his  own  person  the  perpetual  and  unending 
struggle,  and  striking  for  himself  the  decisive  blow. 
There  is  no  act  so  well  known  in  James's  life  as  that  of 
the  second  Douglas  murder,  which  gives  a  sinister  repeti- 
tion, always  doubly  impressive,  to  the  previous  tragedy. 
And  yet  between  the  two  what  fluctuations  of  feeling,  what 
changes  of  policy,how  many  long  exasperations, ineffectual 
pardons,  convictions  unwillingly  formed,  must  have  been 
gone  through.  That  he  was  both  just  and  gentle  we  have 
every  possible  proof,  not  only  from  the  unanimous  con- 
sent of  the  chronicles,  but  from  the  manner  in  which, 
over  and  over  again,  he  forgives  and  condones  the  oft- 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  99 

repeated  offenses  of  his  friend.  And  there  could  be  few 
more  interesting  psychological  studies  than  to  trace  how, 
from  the  sentiments  of  love  and  admiration  he  once  en- 
tertained for  Douglas,  he  was  wrought  to  such  indigna- 
tion and  wrath  as  to  yield  to  the  weird  fascination  of  that 
precedent  which  must  have  been  so  burnt  in  upon  his 
childish  memory,  and  to  repeat  the  tragedy  which  within 
the  recollection  of  all  men  had  marked  the  Castle  of 
Edinburgh  with  so  unfavorable  a  stain. 

We  are  still  far  from  that,  however,  in  the  bright  days 
when  Douglas  was  Lieutenant-Governor  of  the  kingdom, 
and  the  men  who  had  murdered  his  kinsmen  were  making 
what  struggle  they  could  against  his  enmity,  which  pur- 
sued them  to  the  destruction  of  one  family  and  the 
frequent  hurt  and  injury  of  the  other.  How  Livingstone 
and  his  household  escaped  from  time  to  time  but  were 
finally  brought  to  ruin,  how  Crichton  wriggled  back  into 
favor  after  every  overthrow,  sometimes  besieged  in  his 
castle  for  months  together,  sometimes  entrusted  with  the 
highest  and  most  honorable  missions,  it  would  be  vain 
to  tell  in  detail.  James  would  seem  to  have  yielded  to 
the  inspiration  of  his  new  prime  minister  for  a  period  of 
years,  until  his  mind  had  fully  developed,  and  he  became 
conscious,  as  his  father  had  been,  of  the  dangers  which 
arose  to  the  common  weal  from  the  lawless  sway  of  the 
great  nobles,  their  continual  feuds  among  themselves,  and 
the  reckless  independence  of  each  great  man's  following, 
whose  only  care  was  to  please  their  lord,  with  little  regard 
either  for  the  King  and  Parliament  or  the  laws  they  made. 
During  this  period  his  mother  died,  though  there  is  little 
reason  to  suppose  that  she  had  any  power  or  influence  in 
his  council,  or  that  her  loss  was  material  to  him.  She 
had  married  a  second  time,  another  James  Stewart  called 
the  Black  Knight  of  Lome,  and  had  taken  a  considerable 
part  in  the  political  struggles  of  the  time  always  with  a 


100  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

little  surrounding  of  her  own,  and  a  natural  hope  in  every 
change  that  it  might  bring  her  son  back  to  her.  It  is 
grievous  that  with  so  fair  a  beginning,  in  all  the  glow  of 
poetry  and  love,  this  lady  should  have  dropped  into  the 
position  of  a  foiled  conspirator,  undergoing  even  the 
indignity  of  imprisonment  at  the  hands  of  the  Regents 
whom  she  sometimes  aided  and  sometimes  crossed  in  their 
arrangements.  But  a  royal  widow  fallen  from  her  high 
estate,  a  queen-mother  whose  influence  was  feared  and 
discouraged  and  every  attempt  at  interference  sternly 
repressed,  would  need  to  have  been  of  a  more  powerful 
character  than  appears  in  any  of  her  actions  to  make  head 
against  her  antagonists.  She  died  in  D unbar  in  144G, 
of  grief,  it  is  said,  for  the  death  of  her  husband,  who  had 
been  banished  from  the  kingdom  in  consequence  of  some 
hasty  words  against  the  power  of  the  Douglas,  of  whom 
however,  even  while  he  was  still  in  disgrace,  Sir  James 
Stewart  had  been  a  supporter.  Thus  ended  in  grief  and 
humiliation  the  life  which  first  came  into  sight  of  the 
world  in  the  garden  of  the  great  donjon  at  Windsor  some 
quarter  of  a  century  before,  amid  all  the  splendor  of 
English  wealth  and  greatness,  and  all  the  sweet  surround- 
ings of  an  English  May. 

James  was  married  in  1450,  when  he  had  attained  his 
twentieth  year,  to  Mary  of  Gueldres,  about  whom  during 
her  married  life  the  historians  find  nothing  to  say  except 
that  the  King  awarded  pardon  to  various  delinquents  at 
the  request  of  the  Queen — an  entirely  appropriate  and 
becoming  office.  Xo  doubt  his  marriage,  so  distinct  as  a 
mark  of  maturity  and  independence,  did  something  to- 
wards emancipating  James  from  the  Douglas  influence  ; 
and  it  is  quite  probable  that  the  selection  of  Sir  William 
Crichton  to  negotiate  the  marriage  and  bring  home  the 
bride  may  indicate  a  lessening  supremacy  of  favor  to- 
wards Douglas  iu  the  mind  of  his  young  sovereign.  Pits- 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  101 

cottie  records  a  speech  made  to  the  Earl  and  his  brothers 
by  the  King,  when  he  received  and  feasted  them  after 
their  return  from  a  successful  passage  of  arms  with  the 
English  on  the  border,  in  which  Jarnes  points  out  the  ad- 
vantage of  a  settled  rule  and  lawful  authority,  and  im- 
presses upon  them  the  necessity  of  punishing  robbers  and 
reivers  among  their  own  followers,  and  seeing  justice 
done  to  the  poor,  as  well  as  distinguishing  themselves 
by  feats  of  war.  By  this  time  the  Douglases  had  once 
more  become  a  most  formidable  faction.  The  head  of 
the  house  had  so  successfully  worked  for  his  family  that 
he  was  on  many  occasions  surrounded  by  a  band  of  earls 
and  barons  of  his  own  blood,  his  brothers  having  in  suc- 
cession, by  means  of  rich  marriages  or  other  means  of  ag- 
grandisement, attained  the  same  rank  as  himself,  and, 
though  not  invariably,  acting  as  his  lieutenants  and  sup- 
porters, while  his  faction  was  indefinitely  increased  by 
the  followers  of  these  cadets  of  his  house,  all  of  them  now 
important  personages  in  the  kingdom.  It  was  perhaps 
the  swelling  pride  and  exaltation  of  a  man  who  had  all 
Scotland  at  his  command,  and  felt  himself  to  have 
reached  the  very  pinnacle  of  greatness,  which  suggested 
the  singular  expedition  to  France  and  Home  upon  winch 
Douglas  set  forth,  in  the  mere  wantonness  of  ostentation 
and  pride,  according  to  the  opinion  of  all  the  chroniclers, 
to  spread  his  own  fame  throughout  the  world,  and  show 
the  noble  train  and  bravery  of  every  kind  with  which  a 
Scottish  lord  could  travel.  It  was  an  incautious  step  for 
such  a  man  to  take,  leaving  behind  him  so  many  enemies  ; 
but  he  would  seem  to  have  been  too  confident  in  his  own 
power  over  the  King,  and  in  his  greatness  and  good  for- 
tune, to  fear  anything.  No  sooner  was  he  gone,  how- 
ever, than  all  the  pent-up  grievances,  the  complaints  of 
years  during  which  he  had  wielded  almost  supreme  power 
in  Scotland,  burst  forth.  The  King,  left  for  the  first 


102  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

time  to  himself  and  to  the  many  directors  who  were  glad 
to  school  him  upon  this  subject,  was  startled  out  of  his 
youthful  ease  by  the  tale  of  wrong  and  oppression  which 
was  set  before  him.  N"o  doubt  Sir  William  Crichton 
would  not  be  far  from  James's  ear,  nor  the  representatives 
of  his  colleague,  whom  Douglas  had  pursued  to  the  death. 
The  state  of  affairs  disclosed  was  so  alarming  that  John 
Douglas,  Lord  Balvenie,  the  brother  of  the  Earl,  who 
was  left  his  procurator  and  representative  in  his  absence, 
was  hastily  summoned  to  Court  to  answer  for  his  chief. 
Balvenie,  very  unwilling  to  risk  any  inquisition,  held 
back,  until  he  was  seized  and  brought  before  the  King. 
His  explanations  were  so  little  satisfactory,  that  he  was 
ordered  at  once  to  put  order  in  the  matter,  and  to  "re- 
store to  every  man  his  own  : "  a  command  which  he  re- 
ceived respectfully,  but  as  soon  as  lie  got  free  ignored 
altogether,  keeping  fast  hold  of  the  ill-gotten  possessions, 
and  hoping,  no  doubt,  that  the  momentary  indignation 
would  blow  over,  and  all  go  on  as  before.  James,  how- 
ever, was  too  much  roused  to  be  trifled  with.  When  he 
saw  that  no  effect  was  given  to  his  orders  he  took  the 
matter  into  his  own  hands.  The  Earl  of  Orkney  with  a 
small  following  was  first  sent  with  the  King's  commission 
to  do  justice  and  redress  wrongs  :  but  when  James  found 
his  ambassador  insulted  and  repulsed,  he  took  the  field 
himself,  first  making  proclamation  to  all  the  retainers 
of  the  Douglas  to  yield  to  authority  on  pain  of  being  de- 
clared rebels.  Arrived  in  Galloway,  he  rode  through  the 
whole  district,  seizing  all  the  fortified  places,  the  narrow 
peel-houses  of  the  Border,  every  nest  of  robbers  that  lay 
in  his  way,  and,  according  to  one  account,  razed  to  the 
ground  the  Castle  of  Douglas  itself,  and  placed  a  garrison 
of  royal  troops  in  that  of  Lochmaben,  the  two  chief 
strongholds  of  the  house.  But  James's  mission  was  not 

o 

Only  to  destroy  but  to  restore,     lie  divided  the  lauds  thus 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  10,3 

taken  from  the  House  of  Douglas,  according  to  Pitscottie, 
'  among  their  creditors  and  complainers,  till  they  were 
satisfied  of  all  things  taen  from  them,  whereof  the  mis- 
doers  were  convict."  This,  however,  must  only  have 
applied,  one  would  suppose,  to  the  small  losses  of 
the  populace,  the  lifted  cows  and  harried  lands  of 
one  small  proprietor  and  another.  "  The  King,"  adds 
the  same  authority,  "notwithstanding  of  this  rebellion, 
was  not  the  more  cruel  in  punishing  thereof  nor  he  was 
at  the  beginning  :  *'  while  Buchanan  tells  us  that  his 
clemency  and  moderation  were  applauded  even  by  his 
enemies. 

This  is  throughout  the  opinion  which  we  find  of  James. 
He  was  capable  of  being  moved  to  sudden  violent  indig- 
nation and  hasty  action,  as  Avas  too  distinctly  demon- 
strated afterwards  ;  but  the  hasty  outburst  once  over 
came  back  at  once  without  rancor  to  his  natural  benig- 
nity, always  merciful,  slow  to  anger,  ready  to  hear  what- 
ever the  accused  might  have  to  say  for  himself,  and  to 
pardon  as  long  as  pardon  was  possible.  Notwithstanding 
the  rebellious  and  audacious  contempt  of  all  authority 
but  their  own  shown  by  the  Douglas  party,  notwithstand- 
ing the  standing  danger  of  their  insolent  power,  their 
promises  so  often  broken,  their  frequent  submissions  and 
actual  defiance,  his  aim  in  all  his  dealings  with  them  was 
rather  to  do  justice  to  the  oppressed  than  to  punish  the 
guilty.  His  genial  temper,  and  that  belief  in  his  kind 
which  is  always  so  ingratiating  a  quality,  is  proved  by  the 
account  Major  gives  of  his  life  on  those  military  expedi- 
tions which  from  this  time  forth  occupied  so  much  of  his 
time.  He  lived  with  his  soldiers  as  an  equal,  that  histo- 
rian tells  us,  eating  as  they  did,  without  the  precaution 
of  a  taster,  which  Major  thinks  highly  imprudent,  but 
which  would  naturally  bind  to  the  frank  and  generous 
monarch  the  confidence  and  regard  of  his  fellow-soldiers, 


104:  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

and  the  captains  with  whom  he  shared  the  sometimes 
scanty  provisions  of  the  campaign. 

News  of  these  strange  events  was  conveyed  to  Douglas, 
now  in  England  on  his  return  from  the  pilgrimage  of 
pride  and  ostentation  to  which,  though  it  was  professedly 
for  the  Papal  jubilee,  no  one  attempts  to  give  a  religious 
character.  He  was  returning  at  his  leisure,  lingering  on 
his  way,  not  without  suspicion  of  secret  treaties  with  the 
English  in  support  of  the  party  of  York,  though  all  the 
prepossessions  of  Scotland  and  King  James  were  on  the 
other  side  :  but  hurried  home  on  hearing  the  news,  and 
was  politic  enough  to  make  immediate  submission  as  soon 
as  he  became  aware  of  the  seriousness  of  the  crisis,  prom- 
ising everything  that  could  be  demanded  of  him  in  the 
way  of  obedience  and  respect  of  "  the  King's  peace." 
Once  more  he  was  fully  and  freely  pardoned,  his  lands, 
with  some  small  diminution,  restored,  and  the  King's 
confidence  given  back  to  him  with  a  too  magnanimous 
completeness.  In  the  Parliament  held  in  Edinburgh  in 
June  1451  he  was  present,  and  received  back  his  charters 
in  full  amity  and  kindness,  to  the  great  satisfaction  and 
pleasure  of  "all  gud  Scottis  men."  Later  in  the  year, 
in  his  capacity  of  Warden  of  the  Marches,  he  was  em- 
ployed to  assuage  the  endless  quarrels  of  the  Border,  but 
during  his  negotiations  for  this  purpose  secretly  renewed 
his  mysterious  and  treacherous  dealings  with  England, 
of  which  there  is  no  very  clear  account,  but  which  was  of 
all  others  the  kind  of  treachery  most  obnoxious  to  his 
countrymen.  So  far  as  would  appear,  James  obtained 
some  hint  of  these  clandestine  proceedings,  and  was  very 
angry,  "  highly  commoved,"  as  was  natural :  on  hearing 
which  Douglas  appeared  once  more  to  ask  pardon,  with 
apparently  an  inexhaustible  confidence  in  the  clemency  of 
the  young  man  whom  he  had  guided  so  long.  But  the 
idea  of  some  "  quyet  draucht  betwixt  him  and  the  King 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  1Q5 

of  Ingland,"  some  secret  understanding  with  the  old 
enemy,  was  more  serious  still  than  domestic  rebellion, 
and  though  he  pardoned  at  the  "great  request"  of 
the  Queen  and  nobles,  the  King  did  not  again  restore 
so  doubtful  a  representative  to  the  great  offices  he  had 
held.  There  would  seem  to  have  been  a  pause  of  con- 
sternation on  the  part  of  Douglas  when  he  found  for  the 
first  time  the  charm  of  his  friendship  and  every  petition 
for  pardon  ineffectual.  To  attribute  the  change  to  old 
Crichton,  who  had  recovered  much  of  his  former  influ- 
ence and  was  again  Chancellor,  was  easy,  and  the  Earl 
who  had  but  the  other  day  sworn  the  King's  peace  with 
all,  set  an  ambush  for  his  old  opponent,  and  would  have 
succeeded  in  killing  him  but  for  Crichton's  son,  -'  ane 
young  valiant  man,"  who  overcame  the  bravos,  and 
housed  his  father  safely  in  his  Castle  of  Crichton.  Doug- 
las himself  was  afterwards  almost  surprised  in  Edin- 
burgh by  Crichton's  followers,  and  saved  himself  only  by 
a  hurried  departure  not  unlike  a  flight. 

This  disappointment,  and  the  loss  of  the  King's  favor, 
and  the  apparent  solidity  of  his  rivals  in  their  place,  half 
maddened  the  great  noble,  little  accustomed  to  yield  to 
any  contradiction.  He  had  been  up  to  this  time,  save  in 
so  far  as  his  private  feuds  and  covetousness  were  con- 
cerned, on  the  side  of  lawful  authority  ;  the  King's  man 
so  long  as  the  King  was  his  man,  and  did  not  interfere 
with  the  growth  of  his  wealth  and  greatness.  But  now 
he  would  seem  to  have  given  up  the  hope  of  recovering 
his  hold  upon  his  sovereign,  and  turned  his  eyes  elsewhere 
for  support.  The  Earl  of  Crawford  in  the  north  country, 
and  the  Lord  of  Isles  who  was  also  Earl  of  Eoss  in  the 
west,  were  as  powerful  and  as  intractable  as  Douglas 
himself,  and  more  often  in  open  rebellion  than  in  amity 
with  the  King,  a  constant  danger  and  disturbance  of  all 
good  order  and  law.  Douglas  in  his  anger  made  an  alii- 


106  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

ance  with  these  two,  by  which  all  bound  themselves  to 
resent  and  avenge  any  injury  offered  to  either.  It  was 
probably  an  expedient  of  rage  and  despair — the  desire  of 
doing  what  was  most  baneful  and  insolent  to  his  former 
friends,  such  as  happens  often  when  a  breach  occurs — as 
much  as  a  political  act ;  but  it  is  evident  that  in  every 
way  Douglas  was  on  the  eve  of  open  treachery,  no  longer 
disposed  to  keep  any  terms  with  the  royal  master  whose 
patience  had  been  exhausted  at  last.  It  required,  how- 
ever, a  crowning  outrage  to  arouse  once  more  James's 
much-forgiving  spirit. 

Among  the  gentlemen  of  Galloway,  the  most  of  whom 
rode  with  Douglas  and  supported  him  in  all  his  high-handed 
proceedings,  too  near  neighbors  to  venture  upon  iudepe- 
dence,  were  a  few  who  preferred  to  hold  the  other  side,  that 
of  law  and  justice  and  the  authority  of  the  King.  Among 
them  was  "one  called  Maclelan,  who  was  tutor  of  Bombie 
for  the  time,  and  sister's  son  to  Sir  Patrick  Gray,  principal 
servitor  to  the  King,  and  captain  of  his  guard."  The 
refusal  of  this  man  to  serve  in  the  rebellious  host  under 
the  Earl  was  immediately  punished  by  Douglas,  who  as- 
sailed his  house  and  carried  him  off  prisoner.  The  story 
reads  like  a  romance,  which,  however,  is  no  reason  for  re- 
ceiving it  with  discredit.  A  more  doubtful  circumstance 
is  that  it  is  asserted  to  have  happened  in  Douglas  Castle, 
which  had  been  very  recently  destroyed  by  James,  and 
which  was  besides  at  a  great  distance  from  Edinburgh.  I 
hazard  a  conjecture  whether  it  may  have  happened  in 
the  Castle  of  Abercorn,  since  it  must  have  been  impos- 
sible for  Douglas  in  Galloway  to  pursue  Sir  Patrick  to  the 
very  gates  of  Edinburgh.  Wherever  the  incident  may 
have  occurred,  the  story  is,  that  Sir  Patrick  Gray,  the 
uncle  of  the  prisoner,  hastened  to  the  King  with  the  story 
of  his  nephew's  danger,  and  was  at  once  sent  off  by  James 
with  "  a  sweit  letter  of  supplication,"  praying  the  Earl  to 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  1Q7 

deliver  over  the  unfortunate  gentleman  to  the  messenger 
for  love  of  the  King.  The  Earl  was  at  dinner  when, 
"  bloody  with  spurring,  fiery  red  with  haste,"  Sir  Patrick 
arrived  at  the  castle,  where  the  drawbridge  was  lifted  and 
the  doors  closed.  "  The  Earle  caused  incontinent  draw  the 
boards,  and  rose  and  met  the  said  Sir  Patrick  with  great 
reverence  and  humilitie,  because  he  was  the  King's  prin- 
cipal servant  and  familiar  to  His  Grace."  I  tell  the  rest 
of  the  tale  in  the  words  of  Pitscottie  : — 

"  He  inquired  at  the  said  Patrick  if  he  had  dined,  who  answered 
that  he  had  not.  Then  the  Earle  said  there  was  '  no  talk  to  be  had 
betwixt  ane  full  and  ane  fasting  ;  therefore  ye  shall  dine,  and  we 
shall  talke  together  at  length.' 

"  In  this  meane  tyme  Sir  Patrick  Gray  sat  down  to  his  dinner, 
and  the  Earle  ti'eatted  him  and  made  him  goode  cheare,  whereof 
Sir  Patrick  was  well  contented,  believing  all  things  to  succeed 
well  thereafter.  But  the  Earle  of  Douglas  on  the  other  pairt  took 
a  suspicion  and  conjecture  what  Sir  Patrick  Gray's  commis- 
sion was,  and  dreading  the  desyne  thereof  should  be  for  his 
friend,  the  tutor  of  Bombie  ;  therefore  in  the  meane  time  when 
they  were  at  the  dinner,  talking  of  merry  matters, the  Earle  caused 
quietly  take  forth  the  tutor  of  Bombie  out  of  prison,  and  have 
him  to  the  greene  and  there  strooke  off  his  head  and  took  the 
samine  away  from  him,  and  syne  covered  a  fair  cloth  on  his 
bodie  that  nothing  might  be  seeue  of  that  treasonable  act  that 
was  done.' 

"In  this  meane  time  when  dinner  was  done  Sir  Patrick  Gray 
presented  the  King's  writing  unto  the  Earle,  who  reverently 
received  it  and  considered  the  effect  thereof.  He  gave  great 
thanks  to  Sir  Patrick  Gray,  saying  he  was  beholden  to  him  that 
brought  so  familiar  an  writing  from  his  Prince  to  him,  consider- 
ing how  it  stood  betwixt  them  at  that  time  :  and  as  to  the  de- 
sire and  supplication,  it  should  be  thankfullie  granted  to  the 
King,  and  the  rather  for  Sir  Patrick's  sake  ;  and  took  him  by  the 
hand  and  led  him  furth  to  the  greene  where  the  gentleman  was 
lying  dead,  and  shew  him  the  manner,  and  said,  '  Sir  Patrick, 
you  are  come  a  little  too  late  ;  but  yonder  is  your  sister's  son  ly- 
ing, but  he  wants  the  head  ;  take  his  body  and  do  with  it  what 
you  will.'  Sir  Patrick  answered  again  with  ane  sore  heart,  and 


108  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

said,  '  My  Lord,  ye  have  taken  from  him  nis  head,  dispone  upon 
the  body  as  ye  please  ;  '  and  with  that  called  for  his  horse  and 
leapt  thereon.  And  when  he  was  on  horseback  he  said  to  the 
Earle  on  this  manner,  '  My  Lord,  an  I  live  ye  shall  be  rewarded  for 
your  labour  that  ye  have  used  at  this  time,  according  to  your  de- 
merits.' At  this  saying  the  Earle  was  highly  offended  and 
cryed  for  horse.  Sir  Patrick  seeing  the  Earle's  fury  spurred  his 
horse,  but  he  was  chased  neare  to  Edinburgh  before  they  left  him 
and  had  it  not  been  his  leid  horse  was  so  tryed  and  goode  he  had 
been  taken." 

The  scene  that  ensued  when  James — awaiting  in  Edin- 
burgh the  return  of  his  messenger,  without  a  doubt  we 
may  suppose  of  the  obedience  of  Douglas  the  friend  of  his 
youth,  the  often-pardoned,  owing  so  much  to  his  clem- 
ency and  friendship — saw  Sir  Patrick  arrive  breathless 
and  haggard,  scarcely  escaping,  though  the  King's  mes- 
senger, with  his  life,  and  heard  his  story — the  insolent  con- 
tempt, the  brutal  jest,  the  cruel  murder — is  one  that  might 
well  mark  the  turning-point  even  in  a  mind  so  magnan- 
imous. The  King  had  not  been  entirely  without  signs  of 
inheriting  his  father's  firmness  and  promptitude  ;  but  his 
gentleness  of  disposition,  and  strong  inclination  towards 
kindness  and  peace,  had  in  general  carried  the  day  over 
his  sterner  qualities.  He  had  shown  both  sides  of  his 
character  when  he  pardoned  Douglas  and  accepted  his 
promises  of  reformation  on  his  return,  but  cut  him  off 
from  public  service  and  closed  all  the  doors  of  advance- 
ment against  him.  The  defiance  now  addressed  to  him, 
the  scorn  of  his  letters  and  request,  so  audaciously 
shown,  raised  a  sudden  storm  of  indignation  in  his  breast. 
Whether  his  future  action  was  based  on  the  decision  of 
his  council  to  which  he  submitted,  sanctioning  on  his 
own  part  the  treachery  by  which  alone  Douglas  could  be 
beguiled  within  his  reach,  as  the  chroniclers,  to  whom 
such  a  device  was  quite  justifiable,  tell  us  ;  or  whether 
when  he  issued  his  safe-conduct  he  still  hoped  to  be  able 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  109 

to  convince  the  Earl  of  his  folly  in  resisting,  and  to  bring 
him  to  a  real  and  effectual  change  of  mind,  no  one  can 
now  tell.  But  Jarnes  was  so  little  addicted  to  treachery, 
so  fair,  tolerant  and  merciful,  that  we  may  well  give  him 
the  benefit  of  the  doubt,  and  believe  that  it  was  with  the 
intention  of  making  another  effort  to  bring  Douglas  back 
to  his  right  mind  and  allegiance  that  the  King  invited 
him  to  Stirling,  where  it  was  strange  indeed  that  with 
all  his  enormities  on  his  conscience  Douglas  ventured  to 
come,  whatever  were  the  safe-conducts  given.  "Some 
sayes  he  got  the  great  seale  thereunto  before  he  would 
grant  to  come  to  the  King,"  says  the  chronicle.  The 
fact  that  he  did  come  however,  after  all  that  had  passed, 
says  much  for  his  confidence  in  King  James  and  in  his 
own  power  over  him,  for  Douglas  must  have  been  very 
well  aware  that  safe-conducts  and  royal  promises  were 
but  broken  reeds  to  trust  to. 

When  he  arrived  in  Stirling,  whatever  lowering  looks 
he  might  see  around  him — and  it  is  scarcely  possible  to 
believe  that  Sir  Patrick  Gray  for  one  could  have  entirely 
cleared  his  countenance  of  every  recollection  of  their  last 
meeting,  of  the  men-at-arms  thundering  at  his  heels,  and 
his  nephew's  body  headless  on  the  greensward — Douglas 
found  no  change  in  the  King,  who  received  and  banqueted 
him  "very  royally,"  thinking  if  it  were  possible  "with 
good  deeds  to  withdraw  him  from  his  attempt  that  he 
purposed  to  do."  After  supper  the  King  took  his  rebel- 
lious subject  aside,  into  another  room  opening  from  that 
in  which  they  had  supped,  and  which  is  still  exhibited  in 
Stirling  Castle  to  the  curious  stranger,  and  once  more 
reasoned  with  him  on  his  conduct.  No  private  matter 
would  seem  to  have  been  introduced,  the  treasonable 
league  which  the  Earl  had  made  with  Crawford  and 
Ross,  rebels  against  the  lawful  authority  of  the  kingdom, 
being  the  subject  on  which  James  put  forth  all  his 


110  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

strength  of  argument.  Douglas,  Pitscottie  tells  us,  an- 
swered "  verrie  proudlie/'and  the  argument  grew  hot  be- 
tween the  two  men,  of  whom  one  had  always  hitherto 
been  the  conqueror  in  every  such  passage  of  arms.  It 
was  probably  this  long  habit  of  prevailing  that  made  the 
proud  Earl  so  obstinate,  since  to  submit  in  words  had 
never  heretofore  been  difficult  to  him.  At  last  the  dis- 
pute came  to  a  climax,  in  the  distinct  refusal  of  Douglas 
to  give  up  his  traitor-allies.  "  He  said  he  myt  not  nor 
wald  not,"  says  a  brief  contemporary  record.  "Then 
the  King  said,  <  False  traitor,  if  you  will  not,  I  sail/  and 
stert  sodunly  till  him  with  aneknyf."  "And  they  said/' 
adds  this  chronicle  with  grim  significance,  "  that  Patrick 
Gray  straik  him  next  the  King  with  ane  pole  ax  on  the 
hed."  The  other  companions  crowded  round,  giving 
each  his  stroke.  And  thus  within  a  short  space  of  years 
the  second  Earl  of  Douglas  was  killed  in  a  royal  castle, 
while  under  a  royal  safe-conduct,  at  a  climax  of  hopeless 
discord  and  antagonism  from  which  there  seemed  no 
issue.  The  exasperation  of  the  King,  the  dead-lock  of 
all  authority,  the  absolutely  impracticable  point  at  which 
the  two  almost  equal  powers  had  arrived,  account  for, 
though  they  do  not  excuse,  such  a  breach  of  faith.  I 
prefer  to  believe  that  James  had  at  least  no  decided  pur- 
pose in  his  mind,  but  hoped  in  his  own  power  to  induce 
Douglas  to  relinquish  these  alliances  which  were  incom- 
patible with  his  allegiance  ;  but  that  the  sudden  exaspera- 
tion with  which  he  became  convinced  of  his  own  power- 
lessness  to  move  him  brought  about  in  a  moment  the  fatal 
issue  (with  who  knows  what  sudden  wild  stimulus  of 
recollection  from  the  murder  of  which  he  had  been  a 
witness  in  his  childhood  ?)  which  statesmen  less  impulsive 
had  already  determined  upon  as  necessary,  though  prob- 
ably not  in  this  sudden  way. 

The    "  Schort   Memorial   of  the    Scottis    Cronikles," 


..»;..- iiii£.j 


ST.  ANTHONY'S  CHAPEL,  AND  ST.  MARGARET'S  LOCH. -Page  110. 

Royal  Edinburgh. 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE. 

called  the  Auchinleck  Chronicle,  gives  a  brief  but  strik- 
ing account  of  the  proceedings  that  followed.  Earl 
Douglas's  retainers  and  kinsmen  would  seem  to  have  been 
struck  dumb  by  the  event,  and  probably  fled  in  horror 
and  dismay  ;  but  it  was  not  till  long  after,  when  the  King 
had  left  Stirling,  that  the  younger  brothers  returned,  on 
St.  Patrick's  Day  in  Lent,  bringing  with  them  the  safe- 
conduct  with  all  its  seals,  which  they  exhibited  at  the 
cross  and  dragged  through  the  streets  tied  to  a  horse's 
tail,  with  many  wild  and  fierce  words  against  the  King 
and  all  that  were  with  him,  ending  by  spoiling  and  burn- 
ing the  town.  As  James  was  no  longer  in  it,  however, 
nor  apparently  any  one  who  could  resist  them,  this  was  a 
cheap  and  unsatisfactory  vengeance. 

Some  months  after,  in  the  summer  of  1452,  a  Parliament 
was  held  at  Edinburgh,  in  which  the  three  Estates  passed 
a  declaration  that  no  safe-conduct  had  been  given  on  that 
fatal  occasion — a  declaration  which  it  is  evident  no  one 
believed,  and  which  probably  was  justified  by  some  quibble 
which  saved  the  consciences  of  those  who  asserted  it. 
The  new  Earl,  James  Douglas,  was  summoned  to  appear 
at  this  Parliament,  but  answered  by  a  letter  under  his 
seal  and  that  of  his  brother,  which  was  secretly  affixed  to 
the  door  of  the  Parliament  House,  "declynand  from  the 
King,  saying  that  they  held  not  of  him,  nor  would  hold 
with  him,  with  many  other  slanderous  words,  calling  them 
traitors  that  were  his  secret  council."  Some  say  it  was 
upon  the  church  doors  that  this  defiance  was  attached. 
In  any  case  it  must  have  produced  a  wonderful  hum  and 
commotion  through  the  town,  where  already  no  doubt 
the  slaying  of  the  Douglas  had  been  discussed  from  every 
point  of  view — at  the  cross,  and  among  the  groups  at  the 
street  corners,  where  there  would  be  many  adherents  of 
the  Douglas,  and  many  citizens  ready  to  discuss  the  new 
event  and  all  its  possible  consequences.  The  Parliament 


112  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

was  followe-  oy  a  general  muster  upon  the  Burrowmuir, 
where  the  barons  and  their  men  gathered,  with  all  their 
spears  and  steel  caps  glistening  in  the  June  sunshine,  with 
an  apparent  intention  of  pursuing  the  race  to  its  strong- 
hold and  making  an  end  of  it.  The  raid,  which  was  led 
by  the  King  in  person,  with  an  army  of  some  thirty  thou- 
sand men,  accomplished  little  however,  doing  more  mis- 
chief than  good  the  chronicle  says,  treading  down  the  new 
corn,  and  spoiling  the  country  "right  fellonly," notwith- 
standing the  King's  presence.  The  result,  at  all  events, 
was  complete  submission  on  the  part  of  the  new  Earl,  ac- 
companied by  a  promise  to  bear  no  enmity,  a  promise 
often  made  but  altogether  impossible  in  the  fifteenth 
century  to  mortal  flesh  and  blood. 

It  was  scarcely  possible  hoAvever,  short  of  a  moral  mir- 
acle, that  such  a  thing  could  happen  as  the  abandonment 
of  the  entire  policy  of  the  house  of  Douglas  at  a  moment 
when  their  minds  were  embittered  by  so  great  a  tragedy. 
The  new  Earl  was  not  a  mere  soldier,  still  less  a  courtier, 
but  a  man  of  some  culture,  originally  intended,  it  is  said, 
for  the  Church,  though  this  does  not  seem  to  have  with- 
held him  from  taking  part  in  the  tumults  of  the  time. 
Nor  did  it  restrain  him  from  marrying  his  brother's 
widow,  the  hapless  Maid  of  Galloway,  whose  share  of  the 
Douglas  lands  made  her  indispensable  to  her  two  warlike 
cousins,  though  it  seems  uncertain  whether  either  of  the 
two  marriages,  which  necessitated  two  dispensations  from 
the  Pope,  was  anything  but  nominal.  After  his  submis- 
sion James  Douglas  was  employed  as  his  brother  had  been 
in  the  arrangement  of  terms  of  truce  with  England,  which 
was  too  great  a  temptation  for  him,  and  led  to  further 
treasonable  negotiations.  He  would  seem  also  to  have  re- 
newed his  brother's  alliances  with  the  rebels  of  the  north  : 
and  in  a  very  brief  period  the  nominal  peace  and  doubt- 
ful vows  were  all  thrown  to  the  winds,  and  this  time  there 


JAMES  It.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  H3 

seems  to  have  been  no  question  of  partial  rebellion,  but 
every  indication  that  a  civil  war,  rending  the  entire  coun- 
try in  two,  was  about  to  break  forth.  Douglas  had  the 
strong  backing  of  England  behind  him,  the  support  of 
the  Highland  hordes  always  ready  to  be  poured  upon  the 
peaceful  country,  and  many  great  lords  in  his  immediate 
train.  He  had  raised  an  army  of,  it  is  said,  forty  thou- 
sand men,  an  enormous  army  for  Scotland,  and  it  was  evi- 
dent that  the  struggle  was  one  of  life  and  death. 

At  this  moment  it  would  seem  that  King  James  for  the 
first  time  lost  heart.  He  had  been  fighting  during  all  the 
beginning  of  the  year  1455,  reducing  the  west  and  south, 
the  Douglas  country,  to  subjection  and  desolation.  But 
when  he  found  himself  menaced  by  an  army  as  great  as 
anything  he  could  muster,  with  the  angry  north  in  the 
background  and  clouds  of  half-savage  warriors  on  the  hori- 
zon, the  King's  heart  sank.  He  is  said  to  have  left 
Edinburgh  in  disgust  and  depression,  and  taken  ship  at 
Leith  for  St.  Andrews,  to  seek  counsel  from  the  best  and 
most  trustworthy  of  his  advisers,  a  man  whose  noble  pres- 
ence appears  in  the  distracted  history  with  such  a  calm 
and  sagacious  steadfastness  that  we  can  well  understand 
the  agitated  King's  sudden  impulse  towards  him  at  this 
painful  period  of  his  career.  Bishop  Kennedy  had  him- 
self suffered  from  the  lawlessness  of  the  Douglas  retainers  : 
and  he  too  had  royal  blood  in  his  veins.  He  occupied 
one  of  the  highest  positions  in  the  Church,  and  his  wis- 
dom and  strength  had  made  him  one  of  the  most  promi- 
nent statesmen  in  the  kingdom.  James  arrived  hastily, 
according  to  the  chronicle,  unexpected,  and  with  many 
signs  of  distress  and  anxiety.  He  betrayed  to  the  Bishop 
his  weariness  of  the  ever-renewed  struggle,  and  of  the 
falsehood  and  treachery  which,  even  if  victorious,  were  all 
he  had  to  encounter,  the  failure  of  every  pledge  and  prom- 
ise, the  faith  sworn  one  day  which  failed  him  the  next, 
8 


114:  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

and  the  deep  discouragement  with  all  things  round  him 
which  had  taken  possession  of  his  mind.  The  wise  prel- 
ate heard  this  confession  of  heart-sickness  and  despond- 
ency, and  with  a  fatherly  familiarity  bade  the  young  King 
sit  down  to  meat,  which  he  much  wanted,  while  he  him- 
self went  to  his  oratory  to  pray  for  enlightenment.  That 
James  thought  no  less  than  to  throw  up  the  struggle  and 
retire  from  his  kingdom,  is  what  the  old  writers  say.  But 
when,  with  his  bosom  lightened  by  utterance  of  his 
trouble,  and  his  courage  a  little  restored  by  food  and  rest, 
the  Bishop  came  back  to  him  with  a  cheerful  countenance 
from  his  prayers,  the  King  took  heart  again.  Kennedy 
produced  to  him  the  old  image  of  the  sheaf  of  arrows 
which,  bound  together,  Avere  not  to  be  broken,  but  one  by 
one  could  easily  be  snapt  asunder,  and  advised  him  to 
make  proclamation  of  a  free  pardon  to  all  who  would 
throw  down  their  arms  and  make  submission,  and  to  march 
at  once  against  the  rebel  host  with  full  confidence  of  vic- 
tory. Inspired  by  this  advice,  and  by  the  companionship 
of  the  Bishop  who  went  with  him,  the  King  set  out  to 
meet  the  rebels,  though  with  an  army  inferior  in  number 
to  theirs.  Douglas,  from  some  unexplained  reason, 
wavered  and  hesitated,  taking  no  active  step,  and  gave 
Bishop  Kennedy  time  to  put  his  own  suggestion  in  prac- 
tise in  respect  to  his  nephew  Lord  Hamilton — who  was 
one  of  Douglas's  chief  supporters — sending  secret  messen- 
gers to  him  to  urge  him  to  siTbrnission.  Hamilton  no 
doubt  had  already  perceived  signs  of  wavering  purpose 
and  insecurity  in  the  heterogeneous  host,  in  which  were 
many  whose  hearts  failed  them  at  sight  of  the  King's  ban- 
ners— men  who  were  apt  to  rebellion  without  being  wound 
up  to  the  extreme  point  of  civil  war:  but  he  had  "  ane 
kyndlie  love  to  Earl  Douglas  "  as  well  as  a  regard  for  his 
own  honor,  and  would  not  lightly  desert  his  friend. 
While  thus  uncertain  he  appealed  to  Douglas  to  know 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  BIERY  FACE.  H5 

what  he  meant  to  do,  warning  him  that  the  longer  he  hes- 
itated, the  less  would  be  the  forces  at  his  disposal.  Doug- 
las replied  haughtily  that  if  he  were  tired  of  waiting  he 
might  go  when  he  pleased — an  indiscreet  answer,  which 
decided  Hamilton  to  withdraw  and  throw  himself  upon 
the  King's  promised  mercy.  The  same  night  he  went 
over  to  the  royal  army,  carrying  with  him  so  many  that 
"  on  the  morn  thereafter  the  Earl  Douglas  had  not  ane 
hunder  men  by  his  own  household,"  the  whole  host  hav- 
ing melted  away.  Never  was  a  greater  risk  for  a  mon- 
archy nor  a  more  easy  and  bloodless  escape.  The  Earl 
fled  to  the  depths  of  his  own  country  and  thence  to  Eng- 
land, where  he  lived  long  a  pensioned  dependant,  after  all 
his  greatness  and  ambition,  to  reappear  in  history  only 
like  a  ghost  after  many  silent  years. 

Amid  all  these  bewildering  and  bitter  struggles,  in 
which  much  misery  was  no  doubt  involved,  it  is  recorded 
of  the  King  that  he  never  lost  his  humane  character,  and 
that  even  in  the  devastations  he  was  forced  to  sanction  or 
command,  the  cruel  reprisals  carried  out  over  all  the 
south  of  Scotland,  his  severity  was  always  tempered  with 
mercy.  "  He  Avas  not  so  much  feared  as  a  king  as  loved 
like  a  father,"  says  Major.  This  luminous  trait  appears 
through  all  the  darkness  of  the  vexed  and  furious  time. 
The  King  was  always  ready  to  pardon  at  a  word,  to  believe 
in  the  vows  and  receive  the  submission  of  the  fiercest 
rebels.  One  curious  evidence  of  the  confidence  felt  in 
him  was  shown  by  the  widow  of  the  murdered  Earl,  Mar- 
garet Douglas,  the  Maid  of  Galloway,  a  woman  doubly  in- 
jured in  every  relation — the  sister  of  the  young  Earl  mur- 
dered at  Edinburgh,  married  by  his  successor  in  order  to 
reunite  the  Douglas  patrimony  a  great  portion  of  which 
went  to  her  as  her  brother's  heir — and  again  forced  into  an 
other  and  unlawful  marriage  by  her  husband's  brother, 
immediately  upon  his  death,  for  the  same  end.  James 


116  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

received  this  fugitive  kindly,  restored  to  her  part  of  the 
land  of  her  family,  and  finally  married  her — thus  freeing 
her  from  the  lawless  bond  into  which  she  had  been  driven — 
to  his  own  step-brother,  John,  Earl  of  Atholl,  "  the  Black 
Knight  of  Lome's  son  ;  "  upon  hearing  of  which  another 
fugitive  of  a  similar  description  appeared  upon  the  scene. 

"  When  the  Earl  of  Ross's  wyff  understood  the  King  to  be 
some  part  favourable  to  all  that  sought  his  grace  she  fled  also  un- 
der his  protection  to  eschew  the  cruel  tyranny  of  her  husband, 
which  she  dreaded  sometyme  before.  The  King  called  to  re- 
membrance that  this  woman  was  married  not  by  her  own  coun- 
sel to  Donald  of  the  Isles  (the  Earl  of  Ross).  He  gave  her  also 
sufficient  lands  and  living  whereon  she  might  live  according 
to  her  estate." 

The  case  of  women,  and  especially  heiresses,  in  that  law- 
less age  must  have  been  miserable  indeed.  Bandied  about 
from  one  marriage  to  another,  forced  to  accept  such 
security  as  a  more  or  less  powerful  lord  could  give,  and 
when  he  was  killed  to  fall  victim  to  the  next  who  could 
seize  upon  her,  or  to  whom  she  should  be  allotted  by 
feudal  suzerain  or  chieftain,  the  mere  name  of  a  king  who 
did  not  disdain  a  woman's  plaint,  but  had  compassion  and 
help  to  give,  must  have  conveyed  hope  to  many  an  un- 
happy lady  bound  to  a  repugnant  life.  James  would 
seem  to  have  been  the  only  man  who  recognized  the 
misery  to  which  such  unconsidered  items  in  the  wild  and 
tumultuous  course  of  affairs  might  be  driven. 

Thus  King  James  and  Scotland  with  him  were  delivered 
from  the  greatest  and  most  dangerous  of  the  powerful 
houses  that  held  the  country  in  fear.  Shortly  after  he 
conquered,  partly  by  arms,  partly  by  the  strain  of  a  uni- 
versal impulse,  which  seemed  to  rouse  the  barons  to  a 
better  way,  those  great  allies  in  the  north  who  held  the 
key  of  the  Highlands,  the  Earl  of  Crawford  and  the  Earl 
of  Ross,  so  that  at  last  something  of  a  common  rule  and 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE. 


117 


MONS    MEG. 


common  sentiment  began 
to  move  the  country.  It  is 
almost  needless  to  say 
that  James  took  advan- 
tage of  this  temporary  unity  and 
enthusiasm  in  order  to  invade  Eng- 
land— a  thing  without  which  no  Scots 
King  could  be  said  to  be  happy 
The  negotiations  by  which  he  was  at  once  stimulated  and 
hindered — among  others  by  ambassadors  from  the  Duke 
of  York  to  ask  his  help  against  Henry  YI,  with  orders  to 
arrest  his  army  on  their  way — are  too  complicated  to  be 
entered  upon  ;  but  at  last  the  Scots  forces  set  out  and, 
after  various  successes.  James  found  himself  before  Rox- 
burgh, a  town  and  castle  which  had  remained  in  the  hands 
of  the  English  from  the  time  when  the  Earl  of  March 
deserted  his  country  for  England  in  the  reign  of  Robert 
III.  The  town  was  soon  taken,  but  the  castle,  in  which 
there  was  a  brave  garrison,  stood  out  manfully.  This 
invasion  of  the  Borders,  and  opportunity  of  striking  a 
blow  at  the  "  auld  enemy,"  was  evidently  an  act  of  the 


118  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

highest  policy  while  yet  the  surgings  of  civil  war  were  not 
entirely  quieted,  and  a  diversion  of  ideas  as  well  as  new 
opportunities  of  spoil  were  peculiarly  necessary.  Its 
first  excellent  result  was  that  Donald  of  the  Isles,  the 
Earl  of  Eoss  and  terror  of  the  nortli  country,  whose  sub- 
mission had  been  but  provisionally  accepted,  and  de- 
pended upon  some  evidence  of  real  desire  for  the  interest 
of  the  common  weal,  suddenly  appeared  with  "ane  great 
armie  of  men,  all  armed  in  the  Highland  fashion,"  and 
claimed  the  vanguard,  the  place  of  honor,  and  to  be 
allowed  to  take  upon  him  "  the  first  press  and  dint  of  the 
battell."  James  received  this  unexpected  auxiliary  with 
"  great  humanitie,"  but  prudently  provided,  before  ac- 
cepting his  offer,  which  apparently,  however,  was  made 
in  all  good  faith,  that  Donald  should  "  stent  his  pavil- 
liones  a  little  by  himself,"  until  full  counsel  had  been 
taken  on  the  subject.  The  army  was  also  joined  by  "a 
great  company  of  stout  and  chosen  men,"  under  the  Earl 
of  Huntly,  whose  corning  "  made  the  King  so  blyth  that 
he  commanded  to  charge  all  the  guns  and  give  the  castle 
ane  new  volie."  James  would  seem  throughout  to  have 
felt  the  greatest  interest  in  the  extraordinary  new  arm  of 
artillery  which  had  made  a  revolution  in  warfare.  He 
pursued  siege  after  siege  with  a  zeal  in  which  something 
of  the  ardor  of  a  military  enthusiast  and  scientific  inquirer 
mingled  with  the  necessities  of  the  struggle  in  which  he 
was  engaged.  The  "  Schort  Cronikle,"  already  quoted, 
describes  him  as  lingering  over  the  siege  of  Abercorn, 
"  striking  mony  of  the  towers  down  with  the  gret  gun 
the  whilk  a  Tranche  man  shot  richt  wele,  and  failed  na 
shot  within  a  fathom  where  it  was  charged  him  to  hit." 
And  when,  in  the  exultation  of  his  heart  to  see  each  new 
accession  of  force  come  in,  he  ordered  "  a  new  volie  " 
against  the  stout  outstanding  walls,  the  excitement  of  the 
discharge,  the  eagerness  of  an  adept  to  watch  the  effect, 


JAMES  II.  WITH  THE  FIERY  FACE.  H9 

no  doubt  made  this  dangerous  expression  of  satisfaction  a 
real  demonstration  of  pleasure. 

King  James  had  attained  at  this  time  a  success  which 
probably  a  few  years  before  his  warmest  imagination  could 
not  have  aspired  to.  He  had  brought  into  subjection  the 
great  families  which  had  almost  contested  his  throne  with 
him.  Douglas,  the  highest  and  most  near  himself,  had 
been  swept  clean  out  of  his  way.  The  fiercest  rebel  of 
all,  the  head  of  the  Highland  caterans,  with  his  wild  host 
in  all  their  savage  array,  was  by  his  side,  ready  to  charge 
under  his  orders.  The  country,  drained  of  its  most  law- 
less elements,  Avas  beginning  to  breathe  again,  to  sow 
its  fields  and  rebuild  its  homesteads.  Instead  of  the 
horrors  of  civil  war  his  soldiers  were  now  engaged  in  the 
most  legitimate  of  all  enterprises — the  attempt  to  recover 
from  England  an  alienated  possession.  Everything  was 
bright  before  him,  the  hope  of  a  great  reign,  the  promise 
of  prosperity  and  honor  and  peace. 

It  is  almost  a  commonplace  of  human  experience  that 
in  such  moments  the  blow  of  fate  is  near  at  hand.  The 
big  guns  which  were  a  comparatively  new  wonder,  full  of 
interest  in  their  unaccustomed  operation,  were  still  a 
danger  as  well  as  a  prodigy,  and  James  would  seem  to 
have  forgotten  the  precautions  that  were  considered  nec- 
essary in  presence  of  an  armament  still  only  partially 
understood.  The  historian  assumes,  as  every  human  ob- 
server is  apt  to  do  in  face  of  such  a  calamity,  a  tone  of 
blame.  "  This  Prince,"  says  the  chronicle  with  a  shrill 
tone  of  exasperation  in  the  record  of  the  catastrophe, 
"more  curious  than  became  the  majestic  of  a  king,  did 
stand  hard  by  when  the  artilliarie  was  discharging."  And 
in  a  moment  all  the  labors  and  struggles,  and  the  hope 
of  the  redeemed  Kingdom  and  all  the  prosperity  that  was 
to  come,  were  at  an  end.  One  can  imagine  the  sudden 
dismay  in  the  group  around  him,  the  rush  of  his  attend- 


120  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

ants,  his  own  feeble  command  to  keep  silence  when 
some  cry  of  horror  rose  from  the  pale-faced  circle.  His 
thigh  had  been  broken,  "  dung  in  two/'  by  the  explosion 
of  the  gun,  "  by  which  he  was  struken  to  the  ground,  and 
died  hastilie  thereafter,"  with  no  time  to  say  more  than 
to  order  silence,  lest  the  army  should  be  discouraged  and 
the  siege  prove  in  vain. 

So  ended  the  troublous  reign  of  the  second  James, 
involved  in  strife  and  warfare  from  his  childhood,  vexed 
by  the  treacheries  and  struggles  over  him  of  his  dearest 
friends,  full  of  violence  alien  to  his  mind  and  temper, 
which  yet  was  justified  by  his  example  at  the  most  critical 
moment  of  his  life.  He  made  his  way  through  continual 
contention,  intrigue,  and  blood,  for  which  he  was  not  to 
blame,  to  such  a  settlement  of  national  affairs  as  might 
have  consolidated  Scotland  and  made  her  great — by  pa- 
tience and  firmness  and  courage,  and  conspicuously  by 
mercy,  notwithstanding  one  crime.  And  when  the  helm 
was  in  his  hands,  and  a  fair  future  before  him,  fell,  not 
ignominiously  indeed,  yet  uselessly,  a  noble  life  thrown 
away,  leaving  once  more  chaos  behind  him.  He  was  only 
twenty-nine  when  the  thunder-bolt  thus  falling  from  a 
clear  sky  destroyed  all  the  hopes  of  Scotland  ;  yet  had 
reigned  long,  for  twenty-three  years  of  trouble,  tumult, 
and  distress. 


CHAPTER  III. 

JAMES   III  :   THE   MAN"   OF   PEACE. 

AGAIN  the  noises  cease  save  for  a  wail  of  lamentation 
over  the  dead.  The  operations  of  war  are  suspended,  the 
dark  ranks  of  the  army  stand  aside,  and  every  trumpet 
and  fatal  cannon  is  silent  while  once  more  a  woman  and 
a  child  come  into  the  foreground  of  the  historic  scene. 
Once  more,  the  most  pathetic  figure  surely  in  history,  a 
little  startled  boy  clinging  to  his  mother — not  afraid  in- 
deed of  the  array  of  war  to  which  he  has  been  accustomed 
all  his  life,  and  perhaps  with  an  instinct  in  him  of  childish 
majesty,  the  consciousness  which  so  soon  develops  even 
in  an  infant  mind,  of  unquestioned  rank,  but  surrounded 
by  the  atmosphere  of  horror  and  affright  in  which  he  has 
been  taken  from  among  his  playthings — stands  forth  to 
be  hastily  enveloped  in  the  robes  so  pitifully  over-large 
of  the  dead  monarch.  The  lords,  we  are  told,  sent  for 
the  Prince  in  the  first  sensation  of  the  catastrophe,  and 
had  him  crowned  at  Kelso,  feeling  the  necessity  of  that 
central  name  at  least,  round  which  to  rally.  They  were 
not  always  respectful  of  the  real  King  when  they  had  him, 
yet  the  divinity  which  hedged  the  title,  however  helpless 
the  head  round  which  it  shone,  was  felt  to  be  indispen- 
sable to  the  unity  and  strength  of  the  kingdom.  Mary 
of  Gueldres  in  her  sudden  widowhood  would  seem  to 
have  behaved  with  great  dignity  and  spirit  at  this  critical 
moment.  She  is  said  to  have  insisted  that  the  siege 
should  not  be  abandoned,  but  that  her  husband's  death 

121 


122 


THE   CANONGATE   TOLBOOTH. 


might  at   least  accomplish  what  his  heart   had  been  set 
upon  ;  and  the  army  after  a  moment  of  despondency  was 


JAMES  III :    THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  123 

so  "  iucouraged  "  by  the  coming  of  the  Prince  "  that  they 
forgot  the  death  of  his  father  and  past  manfullie  to  the 
hous,  and  wan  the  same,  and  justified  the  captaine  theroff, 
and  kest  it  down  to  the  ground  that  it  should  not  be  any 
impediment  to  them  hereafter."  The  execution  of  the 
captain  seems  a  hard  measure  unless  he  was  a  traitor  to 
the  Scottish  crown  ;  but  no  doubt  the  conflict  became 
more  bitter  from  the  terrible  cost  of  the  victory. 

Once  more  accordingly  the  kingdom  was  thrown  into 
the  chaos  which  in  those  days  attended  a  long  minority, 
the  struggle  for  power,  the  relaxation  of  order,  and  all  the 
evils  that  follow  when  one  firm  hand  full  of  purpose  drops 
the  reins  which  half  a  dozen  conflicting  competitors 
scramble  for.  There  was  not,  at  first  at  least,  anything 
of  the  foolish  anarchy  which  drove  Scotland  into  confusion 
during  the  childhood  of  James  II,  and  opened  the  way  to 
so  many  subsequent  disasters,  for  Bishop  Kennedy,  the 
dead  King's  chief  counselor  and  support  and  a  man  uni- 
versally trusted,  was  in  the  front  of  affairs,  influencing  if 
not  originating  all  that  was  done  :  and  to  him,  almost  as 
a  matter  of  course,  the  education  of  the  little  heir  was  at 
once  confided.  But  Mary  of  Gueldres  was  a  woman  of 
resolution  and  force,  and  did  not  give  up  without  a  struggle 
her  pretensions  to  the  regency.  Buchanan  relates  a  scene 
which,  according  to  his  history,  took  place  in  Edinburgh 
on  the  occasion  of  the  first  Parliament  after  James's 
death.  The  Queen  had  established  herself  in  the  castle 
while  Kennedy  was  in  Holyrood,  probably  with  his  little 
pupil,  but  there  is  no  mention  made  of  James.  On  the 
second  day  of  the  Parliament  Mary  appeared  suddenly  in 
what  would  seem  to  have  been,  according  to  modern 
phraseology,  "  a  packed  house,"  her  own  partisans  having 
no  doubt  been  warned  to  be  present  by  the  action  of  some 
energetic  "  whip,"  and  was,  then  and  there,  by  a  hasty 
Act,  carried  through  at  one  sitting,  appointed  guardian 


ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

and  Regent,  after  which  summary  success  she  returned 
with  great  pomp  to  her  apartments,  though  with  what 
hope  of  having  really  attained  a  tenable  position  it  is  im- 
possible to  say.  When  the  news  was  carried  to  Holyrood, 
Bishop  Kennedy  in  his  turn  appeared  before  the  Estates, 
which  had  been  thus  taken  by  surprise.  It  is  evident 
that  the  populace  of  Edinburgh  was  excited  by  what  had 
occurred — Mary's  partisans  no  doubt  rejoicing,  while  the 
people  in  general,  always  jealous  of  a  foreigner  and  never 
very  respectful  of  a  woman,  surged  through  the  great  line 
of  street  towards  the  castle  with  all  the  fury  of  a  popular 
tumult.  The  High  Street  of  Edinburgh  was  not  unac- 
customed to  sudden  encounters,  clashing  of  swords  between 
two  passing  lords,  each  with  fierce  followers,  and  all  the 
risks  of  sudden  brawls  when  neither  would  concede  the 
"  crown  of  the  causeway."  But  the  townsfolk  seldom 
did  more  than  look  on,  with  perhaps  an  ill-concealed  sat- 
isfaction in  the  wounds  inflicted  by  their  natural  opponents 
upon  each  other.  On  this  occasion,  however,  the  tumult 
was  a  popular  one,  involving  the  interests  of  the  citizens  ; 
and  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  the  inclinations  of  the 
townsfolk  would  not  rather  lean  towards  the  Queen,  a 
woman  of  wealth  and  stately  surroundings  likely  to  enter- 
tain princes  and  great  personages  and  to  fill  Edinburgh 
with  the  splendor  of  a  Court,  than  to  the  prelate,  although 
his  tastes  also  were  magnificent,  whose  metropolis  was  not 
Edinburgh  but  St.  Andrews,  and  who  might  consider 
frugality  and  sobriety  the  best  qualities  for  the  Court  of 
a  minor.  At  all  events  the  crowd  had  risen  and  was  ripe 
for  tumult,  when  Bishop  Kennedy  persuaded  them  to 
pause,  and  reminded  them  of  the  mutual  forbearance  and 
patience  and  quiet  which  was  above  all  necessary  at  such 
a  troublous  time.  Other  prelates  would  seem  to  have 
been  in  his  train,  for  we  are  told  it  was  the  intercessions 
and  explanations  of  "  the  bishops  "  which  prevented  the 


JAMES  III :    THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  125 

tumult  from  rising  into  a  fight.  The  parties  would  seem 
to  have  been  so  strong,  and  so  evenly  divided,  that  the 
question  was  finally  solved  by  a  compromise,  Parliament 
appointing  a  council  of  guardians,  two  on  each  side  : 
Seaton  and  Boyd  for  the  Queen  ;  John  Kennedy,  brother 
of  the  Bishop,  and  the  Earl  of  Orkney,  for  the  others — an 
experiment  which  was  no  more  successful  than  in  the  pre- 
vious minority. 

The  Queen-mother  had  soon,  however,  something  to 
occupy  her  leisure  in  the  visit,  if  visit  it  can  be  called,  of 
Henry  VI  and  his  Queen  and  household,  fugitives  before 
the  victorious  party  of  York,  who  had  sought  refuge  from 
the  Scots,  and  lodging  for  a  thousand  attendants — a  re- 
quest which  was  granted,  and  the  convent  of  the  Greyfriars 
allotted  to  them  as  their  residence.  The  Queen  at  the 
Castle  would  thus  be  a  near  neighbor  of  the  royal  fugitives, 
and  it  is  interesting  to  think  of  the  meeting,  the  sympathy 
and  mutual  condolences  of  the  two  women.  Margaret, 
the  fervid  Provencal,  with  her  passionate  sense  of  wrong 
and  restless  energy,  and  the  hopeless  task  she  had  of  main- 
taining and  inspiring  to  play  his  part  with  any  dignity  her 
too  patient  and  gentle  king  ;  and  Mary,  the  fair  and  placid 
Fleming,  stung  too  in  her  pride  and  affections  by  the 
refusal  of  the  regency,  and  her  subordination  to  those 
riotous  and  unmannerly  lords  and  the  proud  Bishop  who 
had  got  the  affairs  of  Scotland  in  his  hand.  The  two 
Queens  might  have  had  some  previous  acquaintance  with 
each  other,  at  a  time  when  both  had  fairer  hopes  ;  at  all 
events  they  amused  themselves  sadly,  as  they  sat  and  talked 
together,  with  fancies  such  as  please  women,  of  making  a 
marriage  between  the  little  Edward,  the  future  victim  of 
Tewkesbury,  then  a  child  at  his  mother's  knee,  and  the 
little  Princess  of  Scotland  who  played  beside  him,  in  the 
good  days  when  all  these  troubles  should  be  past,  and 
Henry  or  his  son  after  him  should  have  regained  the  Eng- 


126  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

lish  crown.  One  follows  with  regretful  interest  the  noble 
figure  of  Margaret,  under  the  guise  in  which  that  sworn 
Lancastrian  Shakspeare  has  disclosed  it  to  us,  before  her 
sweeter  mood  had  disappeared  under  the  pressure  of  fate, 
and  when  not  curses  but  hopes  came  from  her  mouth  in 
her  young  motherhood,  and  every  recovery  and  restoration, 
and  happy  marriage  and  royal  state,  were  possible  for  her 
boy.  Mary  too  had  been  cut  off  in  the  middle  of  her 
greatness.  They  were  two  Queens  discrowned,  two  fair 
heads  veiled  with  misfortune,  though  nothing  irremedi- 
able had  as  yet  happened,  nothing  that  should  make  the 
future  a  desert  though  the  present  might  be  dark  ;  ready 
to  live  again  in  their  children,  and  make  premature  treaties 
over  the  little  blonde  heads  at  their  knee.  So  natural  a 
scene  comes  in  strangely  to  the  records  of  violence  and 
misery.  Nothing  more  tragic  could  be  than  the  fate  of 
Margaret ;  and  the  splendor  and  happiness  had  been 
very  short-lived  in  Mary's  experience,  soon  quenched  in 
sudden  destruction  ;  but  to  see  the  two  young  mothers 
planning  over  the  heads  of  the  little  ones  how  the  two 
kingdoms  were  to  be  united,  and  happiness  come  back  in  a 
future  that  was  never  to  be,  while  they  sat  together  in  brief 
companionship  in  those  strait  rooms  of  Edinburgh  Castle, 
which  were  so  narrow  and  so  poor  fora  queen's  habitation, 
or  within  the  precincts  of  the  Greyfriars,  looking  out  upon 
the  peaceful  Pentlands  and  the  soft  hills  of  Braid,  is  like 
the  recurring  melody  in  a  piece  of  stormy  music,  the  bit 
of  light  in  a  tempestuous  picture.  It  teaches  us  to  per- 
ceive that,  however  the  firmament  of  a  kingdom  may  be 
torn  with  storms,  there  are  everywhere  about,  even  in 
queens'  chambers,  scenes  of  tenderness  and  peace. 

Mary  died  in  her  own  foundation  of  Trinity  College 
Hospital — the  beautiful  church  of  which  was  demolished 
within  living  memory — three  years  after  her  husband, 
while  her  children  were  still  very  young :  and  thus  all 


JAMES  III :  THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  127 

further  struggles  about  the  regency  were  ended.  She 
does  not  seem  indeed  ever  to  have  repeated  her  one  stand 
for  power.  Bishop  Kennedy,  we  may  well  believe,  was 
not  a  man  with  whom  there  would  be  easy  fighting.  His 
sway  procured  a  little  respite  for  Scotland  in  the  ordinary 
miseries  of  her  career.  The  Douglases  were  safely  out  of 
the  way  and  ended,  and  there  was  a  trace  of  fifteen  years 
with  England  which  kept  danger  from  that  side  at  arm's 
length — not,  the  chroniclers  assure  us,  from  any  addi- 
tional love  between  the  two  countries,  but  because  "the 
Inglish  had  warres  within  themselves  daylie,  stryvand  for 
the  crown."  Kennedy  lived  some  years  after  the  Queen, 
guiding  all  the  affairs  of  the  kingdom  so  wisely  that  "  the 
commounweill  flourished  greatly."'  He  was  a  Church- 
man of  the  noblest  kind,  full  of  care  for  the  spiritual 
interests  of  his  diocese  as  well  as  for  the  secular  affairs 
which  were  placed  in  his  hands.  '•'  He  caused  all  persones 
(parsons)  and  vicars  to  remain  at  their  paroche  kirks," 
says  Pitscottie,  '•  for  the  instruction  and  edifying  of 
their  flocks  :  and  caused  them  preach  the  Word  of  God 
to  the  people  and  visit  them  that  were  sick  ;  and  also  the 
said  Bishope  visited  every  kirk  within  the  diocese  four 
times  in  the  year,  and  preached  to  the  said  parochin  him- 
self the  Word  of  God,  and  inquired  of  them  if  they  were 
dewly  instructed  by  their  parson  and  vicar,  and  if  the 
poor  were  sustained  and  the  youth  brought  up  and  learned 
according  to  the  order  that  was  taine  in  the  house  of 
God." 

With  all  this,  and  many  other  gifts  beside,  among 
which  are  noted  the  knowledge  he  had  of  the  "  civil  laws, 
having  practised  in  the  same,"  and  his  experience  and 
sagacity  in  all  public  affairs — he  was  a  scholar  and  loved 
all  the  arts.  "He  founded,"  says  Pitscottie,  "ane  tri- 
umphant college  in  Sanct  Androis,  called  Sanct  Salva- 
tore's  College,  wherein  he  made  his  lear  (library)  very 


128  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

curiouslie  and  coastlie  ;  and  also  he  biggit  anc  ship,  called 
the  Bishop's  Barge,  and  when  all  three  were  complete,  to 
wit,  the  college,  the  lear,  and  the  barge,  he  knew  not 
which  of  the  three  was  the  costliest ;  for  it  was  reckoned 
for  the  time  by  honest  men  of  consideration  that  the 
least  of  the  three  cost  him  ten  thousand  pound  sterling." 
Major  gives  the  same  high  character  of  the  great  Bishop, 
declaring  that  there  were  but  two  things  in  him  which 
did  not  merit  approval — the  fact  that  he  held  a  priory 
(but  only  one,  that  of  Pittenweem)  in  commendam,  "and 
the  sumptuositi  of  his  sepulcher."  That  sepulcher,  half 
destroyed — after  having  remained  a  thing  of  beauty  for 
three  hundred  years — by  ignorant  and  foolish  hands  in  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  may  still  be  seen  in  the 
chapel  of  his  college  at  St.  Andrews,  the  only  existing 
memorial  of  the  time  when  all  Scotland  was  governed  from 
that  stormy  headland  to  the  great  advantage  of  the  com- 
monwealth. It  is  difficult  to  make  out  from  the  different 
records  whether  the  young  King  remained  in  the  Bishop's 
keeping  so  long  as  he  lived,  which  was  but  until  James  had 
attained  the  age  of  thirteen,  or  whether  the  usual  strug- 
gle between  the  two  sets  of  guardians  appointed  by  Par- 
liament, the  Boyds  and  Kennedies,  had  begun  before  the 
Bishop's  death.  It  may  be  imagined,  however,  that  the 
evident  advantages  to  the  boy  of  Bishop  Kennedy's  care 
would  outweigh  any  formal  appointment ;  although  at 
the  same  time  the  idea  suggests  itself  whether  in  the 
perversity  of  human  nature  this  training  was  not  in  itself 
partly  the  cause  of  James's  weaknesses  and  errors.  He 
would  learn  at  St.  Andrews  not  only  what  was  best  in  the 
learning  of  the  time,  but  as  much  of  the  arts  as  were 
k7iown  in  Scotland,  and  especially  that  noble  art  of  arch- 
itecture, which  has  been  the  passion  of  so  many  princes. 
And  no  doubt  he  would  see  the  advancement  of  professors 
of  these  arts,  of  men  skilful  and  cunning  in  design  and. 


JAMES  in  :  THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  129 

decoration,  the  builders,  the  sculptors,  and  the  musicians, 
whose  place  in  the  great  cathedral  could  never  be  unim- 
portant. A  Churchman  could  promote  and  honor  such 
public  servants  in  the  little  commonwealth  of  his  cathe- 
dral town  with  greater  freedom  than  might  be  done  else- 
where ;  and  James,  a  studious  and  feeble  boy,  not  wise 
enough  to  see  that  the  example  of  his  great  teacher  was 
here  inappropriate  and  out  of  place,  learned  this  lesson 
but  too  well.  The  King  grew  up  "a  man  that  loved 
solitariness  and  desired  never  to  hear  of  warre,  but 
delighted  more  in  musick  and  politie  and  building  nor  he 
did  in  the  government  of  his  realm."  It  would  seem 
that  he  was  also  fond  of  money,  which  indeed  was  very 
necessary  to  the  carrying  out  of  his  pursuits.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  estimate  justly  the  position  of  a  king  of  such  a 
temperament  in  such  circumstances,  whether  he  is  to  be 
blamed  for  abandoning  the  national  policy  and  tradition, 
or  whether  he  was  not  rather  conscientiously  trying  to 
carry  out  his  stewardry  of  his  kingdom  in  a  better  way 
when  he  withheld  his  countenance  from  the  perpetual 
wars  of  the  Border,  and  addressed  himself  to  the  con- 
struction of  noble  halls  and  chapels  and  the  patronage  of 
the  arts.  He  was  at  least  so  far  in  advance  of  his  time, 
still  concerned  with  the  rudest  interests  of  practical  life 
as  to  be  universally  misunderstood :  and  he  had  the 
further  misfortune  of  sharing  the  unpopularity  of  the 
favorites  with  whom  he  surrounded  himself,  as  almost 
every  monarch  has  done  who  has  promoted  men  of  infe- 
rior position  to  the  high  places  of  the  State. 

James's  supineness,  over-refinement,  and  love  of  peace* 
ful  occupations  were  made  the  more  remarkable  from  the 
contrast  with  two  manly  and  chivalrous  brothers,  the 
Dukes  of  Mar  and  Albany,  of  fine  person  and  energetic 
tastes,  interested  in  all  the  operations  of  war,  fond  of 
fine  horses  and  gallant  doings,  and  coming  up  to  all  thg 
9 


130  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

popular  expectations  of  what  was  becoming  in  a  prince. 
^Nothing  is  more  difficult  to  make  out  at  any  time  than 
the  real  motives  and  meaning  of  family  discords  :  and 
this  is  still  more  the  case  in  an  age  not  yet  enlightened 
by  the  clear  light  of  history.  The  chroniclers,  especially 
Boece,  have  much  doubt  thrown  upon  them  by  more 
serious  historians,  who  quote  them  and  build  upon  them 
nevertheless,  having  really  no  better  evidence  to  go  upon. 
The  report  of  these  witnesses  is  that  James  had  been 
warned  by  winches,  in  whom  he  believed,  and  by  one 
Andrew  the  Fleming,  an  astrologer,  that  his  chief  danger 
arose  from  his  own  family,  and  that  "  the  lion  should  be 
devoured  by  his  whelps."  Pitscottie's  account,  however, 
indicates  a  conspiracy  between  Cochrane  and  the  Homes, 
whom  Albany  had  mortally  offended,  as  the  cause  at  once 
of  these  prophecies  and  the  King's  alarm.  The  only 
thing  clear  is  that  he  was  afraid  of  his  brothers,  and  con- 
sidered their  existence  a  danger  to  his  life.  It  would 
appear  that  he  had  already  begun  to  surround  himself  with 
those  favorites  to  whom  was  attributed  every  evil  thing 
in  his  reign,  when  this  poison  was  first  instilled  into  his 
mind  :  and  the  blame  was  attributed  rightly  or  wrongly 
to  Cochrane,  the  chief  of  his  "  minions,"  who  very  prob- 
ably felt  it  to  be  to  his  interest  to  detach  from  James's 
side  the  manly  and  gallant  brothers  who  were  naturally 
his  nearest  counselors  and  champions. 

There  is  very  little  that  is  authentic  known  of  the  men 
whom  James  III  thus  elevated  to  the  steps  of  his  throne. 
Cochrane  was  an  architect  probably,  though  called  a  mason 
in  his  earlier  career,  and  had  no  doubt  been  employed  on 
some  of  the  buildings  in  which  the  king  delighted,  being 
"  verrie  ingenious"  and  "cunning  in  that  craft."  Per- 
haps, however,  to  make  the  royal  favor  for  a  mere  crafts- 
man more  respectable,  according  to  the  notions  of  the 
time,  it  is  added  in  a  popular  story  that  the  favorite  was 


JAMES  III :  THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  131 

a  man  of  great  strength  and  stature,  whose  prowess  in 
some  brawl  attracted  the  admiration  of  the  timid  mon- 
arch, to  whom  a  rnan  who  was  a  tall  fellow  of  his  hands, 
as  well  as  a  person  of  similar  tastes  to  himself,  might  well 
be  a  special  object  of  approval.  A  musician,  William 
Eoger,  an  Englishman,  whose  voice  had  charmed  the  King 
— a  weakness  which  at  least  was  not  ignoble,  and  was 
shared  by  various  other  members  of  his  race — was  the 
second  of  James's  favorites  :  and  there  were  others  still 
less  important — one  the  King's  tailor — a  band  of  persons 
of  no  condition,  who  surrounded  him  no  doubt  with 
flattery  and  adulation,  since  their  promotion  and  main- 
tenance were  entirely  dependent  on  his  pleasure.  King 
Louis  XJ  was  at  that  time  upon  the  throne  of  France,  a 
powerful  prince  whose  little  privy  council  was  composed 
of  equally  mean  men,  and  perhaps  some  reflection  from 
the  Court  of  the  old  ally  of  Scotland  made  young  James 
believe  that  this  was  the  best  and  wisest  thing  for  a 
King  to  do.  Louis  was  also  a  believer  in  astrologers, 
witches,  and  all  the  prophecies  and  omens  in  which  they 
dealt.  To  copy  him  was  not  a  high  ambition,  but  he  was 
in  his  way  a  great  king,  and  it  is  conceivable  that  the 
feeble  monarch  of  Scotland,  never  roused  to  the  height  of 
his  father's  or  grandfather's  example,  took  a  little  satis- 
faction in  copying  what  he  could  from  Louis.  The  ex- 
ample of  Oliver  le  Dain  might  make  him.  think  that  he 
showed  his  superiority  by  preferring  his  tailor,  a  man 
devoted  to  his  service,  to  Albany  or  Angus.  And  if  Louis 
trembled  at  the  predictions  of  his  Eastern  sage,  what  more 
natural  than  that  James  should  quake  when  the  stars  re- 
vealed a  danger  which  every  spaewife  confirmed  ?  No 
doubt  he  would  know  well  the  story  of  the  mysterious 
spaewife  who,  had  her  advice  been  taken,  might  have 
saved  James  I.  from  his  murderers.  It  is  rarely  that 
there  is  not  a  certain  cruelty  involved  in  selfish  cowardice, 


132  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

In  a  sudden  panic  the  mildest-seeming  creature  will 
trample  down  furiously  any  weaker  being  who  stands  in 
the  way  of  his  own  safety,  and  James  was  ready  for  any 
atrocity  when  he  was  convinced  that  his  brothers  were  a 
danger  to  his  life  and  crown.  The  youngest,  the  hand- 
some and  gallant  Mar,  was  killed  by  one  treachery  or 
another  ;  and  Alexander  of  Albany,  the  inheritor  of  that 
ill-omened  title,  was  laid  up  in  prison  to  be  safe  out  of 
his  brother's  way. 

We  find  ourselves  entirely  in  the  regions  of  romance 
in  this  unfortunate  reign.  Sir  "Walter  Scott  has  painted 
for  us  the  uncomfortable  Court  of  Louis  with  his  barber 
and  his  prophet,  and  Dumas  has  reproduced  almost  the 
identical  story  in  his  Vingt  Ans  Apres,  of  the  Duke  of 
Albany's  escape  from  Edinburgh,.  There  could  scarcely 
be  a  more  curious  scene.  Strangely  enough  James  him- 
self was  resident  in  the  castle  when  his  brother  was  a 
prisoner  there.  One  would  have  thought  that  so  near  a 
neighborhood  would  have  seemed  dangerous  to  the 
alarmed  monarch,  but  perhaps  he  thought,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  watch  and  ward  would  be  kept  more  effectu- 
ally under  his  own  eyes.  Mar  had  died  in  the  Canon- 
gate,  perhaps  in  the  Tolbooth  there,  according  to  tradi- 
tion in  a  bath,  where  he  was  bled  to  death,  probably  in 
order  that  a  pretense  of  illness  or  accident  might  be 
alleged ;  and  Edinburgh,  no  doubt,  was  full  of  dark 
whispers  of  this  strange  end  of  one  prince,  and  the  dan- 
ger of  the  other,  shut  up  within  the  castle  walls  where 
the  King's  minions  had  full  sway,  and  any  night  might 
witness  a  second  dark  deed.  Prince  Alexander's  friends 
must  have  been  busy  and  eager  without,  while  he  was 
not  so  strictly  under  bar  and  bolt  inside  that  he  could 
not  make  merry  with  the  castle  officials  now  and  then, 
and  cheat  an  evening  with  pleasant  talk  and  a  glnss  of 
good  wine  with  a  young  captain  of  the  guard.  One  day 


JAMES  III:  THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  133 

there  came  to  him  an  intimation  of  the  arrival  of  a  ship 
at  Leith  with  wine  from  France,  accompanied  by  some 
private  token  that  there  was  more  in  this  announcement 
than  met  the  ear.  Albany  accordingly  sent  a  trusted 
servant  to  order  two  flasks  of  the  wine,  in  one  of  Avhich, 
contained  in  a  tube  of  wax,  was  enclosed  a  letter,  in  the 
other  a  rope  by  which  to  descend  the  castle  walls.  The 
whole  story  is  exactly  as  Dumas  tells  the  escape  of  the 
Due  de  Beaufort,  though  whether  the  romancer  could 
have  seen  the  old  records  of  Scotland,  or  if  his  legend  is 
sanctioned  by  the  authentic  history  of  France,  I  am  un- 
able to  tell.  Alexander,  like  the  prince  in  the  novel, 
invited  the  Captain  of  the  Guard  to  sup  with  him  to  try 
the  new  wine — an  invitation  gladly  accepted.  After 
supper  the  Captain  "  passed  to  the  King's  chamber  to 
see  what  was  doing,  who  was  then  lodged  in  the  castle," 
probably  to  get  the  word  for  the  night.  It  is  curious  to 
think  of  the  unconscious  officer,  so  little  aware  of  what 
was  about  to  befall,  going  from  the  chamber  of  the  cap- 
tive to  that  of  the  King,  where  the  little  Court  would  be 
assembled  at  their  music  or  their  "  tables,"  or  where 
perhaps  James  was  taking  counsel  over  the  leafage  of  a 
capital  or  the  spring  of  an  arch — and  thence  returning 
when  all  the  rounds  were  made,  the  great  gates  barred 
and  bolted,  the  sentries  set,  to  the  Prince  in  his  prison, 
who  was  a  finer  companion  still.  Alexander  plied  the 
unsuspecting  Captain  Avith  his  Avine,  spiced  or  perhaps 
drugged  to  make  it  act  the  sooner,  and  along  with  him  a 
Avarder  or  two  Avho  Avere  in  constant  attendance  upon  the 
royal  prisoner.  A  prince  to  drink  Avith  such  carles  ! 
"  The  fire  was  hett,  and  the  Avyne  was  strong  "  :  and  the 
united  influence  of  the  spiced  drink  and  the  hot  room 
soon  overcame  the  revelers,  all  but  Alexander  and  his 
trusty  man,  Avho  had  taken  care  to  refrain.  In  Dumas 
the  jailer  Avas  but  gagged  and  bound  :  but  in  Scotland 


134  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

life  went  for  little,  and  some  of  the  authorities  say  that 
when  the  Prince  saw  the  drunkards  in  his  power,  "he lap 
from  the  board  and  strak  the  captane  with  ane  whinger 
and  slew  him,  and  also  stiked  other  two  with  his  own 
hand."  He  had  been  informed  that  he  was  to  die  the 
next  day  if  he  did  not  escape  that  night,  which  was  some 
excuse  for  him.1  When  the  men  were  thus  disposed  of, 
in  one  way  or  another,  the  Prince  and  his  servant,  "his 
chamber  chyld,"  stole  out  with  the  rope  to  "a  quiet 
place  "  on  the  wall.  Coming  out  into  the  dark  freshness 
and  stillness  of  the  night  after  that  stifling  and  horrible 
room,  seeing  the  stars  once  more  and  the  distant  glimmer 
of  the  sea,  and  feeling  freedom  at  hand,  it  was  little  they 
would  reck  of  the  jailers,  always  an  obnoxious  class. 
One  would  imagine  that  it  must  have  been  on  the  most 
precipitous  side  of  the  castle  rock  where  there  were  few 
sentinels  and  the  exit  was  easy,  though  the  descent  ter- 
rible. The  faithful  servant  tried  the  rope  first  but  found 
it  too  short,  and  fell,  breaking  his  thigh.  With  what 
feelings  Alexander  must  have  stolen  back  to  get  his  sheets 
with  which  to  lengthen  the  rope,  pushing  through  the 
smoke,  almost  despairing  to  get  off  in  safety  !  One  is  re- 
lieved to  hear  that  he  took  his  crippled  attendant  on  his 
back  and  carried  him,  some  say  to  a  safe  place — or,  as 
others  say,  all  the  way  across  country  to  where  the  ship 
rocked  at  the  pier  of  Leith.  They  must  have  got  down 
to  some  dark  spot  on  the  northern  slopes,  where  there 
would  be  no  city  watchman  or  late  passer-by  to  give  the 
alarm,  and  all  would  be  clear  and  still  before  them  to 

1  Buchanan's  account  is  not  so  bloodthirsty:  he  represents 
Alexander  as  entertaining  his  guests  with  stories  of  his  restora- 
tion to  favor,  and  approaching  deliverance,  and  dismissing 
them  in  all  mirth  and  friendliness  though  heavy  with  wine  :  so 
that  his  guards  having  incontinently  fallen,  asleep  at  their  posts 
he  was  able  to  make  his  escape. 


JAMES  111$:  THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  135 

the  water's  edge — though  a  long,  weary,  and  darkling  way. 

"But  on  the  morne  when  the  watchman  perceived  that  the 
towis  were  hinging  over  the  walls,  then  ran  they  to  seek  the 
Captane  to  show  him  the  matter  and  manner,  but  he  was  not 
in  his  own  chamber.  Then  they  passed  to  the  Duke's  chamber 
and  found  the  door  open  and  ane  dead  man  lying  in  the  chamber 
door  and  the  captane  and  the  rest  burning  in  the  fire,  which 
was  very  dollorous  to  them  ;  and  when  they  missed  the  Duke 
of  Albanie  and  his  chamber  chyld,  they  ran  speedilie  and  shewed 
the  King  how  the  matter  had  happened.  But  lie  would  not 
give  it  credence  till  he  passed  himself  and  saw  the  matter." 

These  events  happened  in  1479,,  when  Albany  escaped 
to  France,  where  he  remained  for  some  years.  Up  to  this 
period  all  that  is  said  of  him  has  been  favorable.  His 
treatment  by  his  brother  was  undeserved,  and  there  is  no 
sign  of  either  treachery  or  rebellion  in  him  in  these  early 
years.  But  when  he  had  languished  for  a  long  time  in 
France  perhaps,  notwithstanding  a  first  favorable  recep- 
tion, sooner  or  later  eating  the  exile's  bitter  bread — exas- 
peration and  despair  must  have  so  wrought  in  him  that 
he  began  to  traffic  with  the  "  auld  enemy  "  of  England, 
and  even  put  his  hand  to  a  base  treaty,  by  which  his 
brother  was  to  be  dethroned  and  he  himself  succeed  to 
the  kingdom  by  grace  of  the  English  king — a  stipulation 
which  Albany  must  have  well  known  would  damn  him  for- 
ever with  his  countrymen. 

In  the  meantime  James  had  begun  to  breathe  again  in 
the  relief  he  felt  to  be  freed  of  the  presence  of  both  his 
brothers.  He  "passed  through  all  Scotland  at  his  pleas- 
ure in  peace  and  rest,"  says  the  chronicler.  But  it  was 
not  long  that  a  king  of  Scotland  could  be  left  in  this  re- 
pose. The  usual  trouble  on  the  Borders  had  begun  again 
as  soon  as  Edward  IV  was  secure  upon  his  throne,  and 
the  English  king  had  even  sent  his  ships  as  far  as  the 
Firth  of  Forth,  where  he  burnt  villages  and  spoiled  the 
coast  under  the  very  eyes  of  James.  Though  he  would 


136  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

so  much  rather  have  been  left  in  quiet  to  complete  his 
beautiful  new  buildings  at  Stirling  and  arrange  the  choir 
in  his  new  chapel,  where  there  was  a  double  supply  of 
musicians  that  the  King  might  never  want  this  pleasure, 
yet  the  sufferings  of  the  people  and  the  angry  impulse 
of  the  discontented  nobles  were  more  than  James  could 
resist,  and  he  set  forth  reluctantly  towards  the  Border 
to  declare  war.  lie  had  become  more  and  more  shut  up 
within  his  little  circle  of  favorites  after  the  death  and 
disappearance  of  his  brothers,  and  Cochrane  had  gradually 
acquired  a  more  and  more  complete  sway  over  the  mind 
of  his  master  and  the  affairs  of  the  realm.  The  favorite 
had  been  guilty  of  all  those  extravagances  which  constitute 
the  Nemesis  of  upstarts.  He  had  trafficked  in  patronage 
and  promotion,  he  had  debased  the  currency,  and  he  was 
supposed  to  influence  the  King  to  everything  least  honor- 
able and  advantageous  to  the  country.  Last  injury  of 
all,  he  had  either  asked  from  the  King  or  accepted  from 
him — at  least,  permitted  himself  to  be  tricked  out  in  the 
name  of  Mar,  the  title  of  the  young  prince  whose  death 
he  was  believed  to  have  brought  about.  The  lords  of 
Scotland  had  already  remonstrated  with  the  King  on 
various  occasions  as  to  the  unworthy  favorites  who  usurped 
their  place  around  his  throne  :  and  their  exasperation 
seems  to  have  risen  to  a  height  beyond  bearing  when  they 
found  "the  mason,"  as  Cochrane  is  called,  with  his  new 
liveries  and  extravagance  of  personal  finery,  at  the  head 
of  the  army  which  was  raised  to  avenge  the  English  in- 
vasion, and  in  the  closest  confidence  of  the  King.  AYhen 
they  had  got  as  far  as  Lauder  the  great  lords,  who  were 
left  out  of  all  James's  private  councils,  assemble*!  in  a 
council  of  their  own  in  the  parish  church  to  talk  over 
their  grievances,  and  to  consult  what  could  be  done  to 
reform  this  intolerable  abuse  and  to  bring  back  the  King 
to  the  right  way.  Some,  it  would  appear,  went  so  far  as 


JAMES  III :    THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  137 

to  meditate  deposition,  declaring  that  James  was  no  longer 
fit  to  be  their  King,  having  renounced  their  counsel  and 
advice,  banished  one  brother  and  slain  another,  and 
"maid  up  fallowes,  maissones,  to  be  lords  and  earls  in  the 
place  of  noblemen."  The  result  of  the  meeting,  however, 
was  that  milder  counsels  prevailed  so  far  as  James  was 
concerned  :  "  They  concluded  that  the  King  should  be 
taine  sof tlie  without  harm  of  his  bodie,  and  conveyed  to 
the  Castle  of  Edinburgh  with  certain  gentlemen,"  while 
Cochrane  and  the  rest  were  seized  and  hanged  over  Lauder 
Brig. 

The  question,  however,  remained,  Who  should  be  so 
bold  as  to  take  the  first  step  and  lay  hands  upon  the 
favorite  ?  It  was  now  that  Lord  Gray,  one  of  the  con- 
spirators, told,  with  that  humor  which  comes  in  so  grimly 
in  many  dark  historic  scenes,  the  story  of  the  mice  and 
the  cat — how  the  mice  conspired  to  save  themselves  by  at- 
taching a  bell  to  the  cat  to  warn  them  of  her  movements — 
until  the  terrible  question  arose  which  among  them  should 
attach  to  the  neck  of  the  enemy  this  instrument  of  safety. 
One  can  imagine  the  grave  barons  with  half  a  smile  look- 
ing at  each  other  consciously,  in  acknowledgment  of  a 
risk  which  it  needed  a  brave  man  to  run.  Angus,  the 
head  of  the  existing  branch  of  the  Douglas  family,  who 
had  already  risen  into  much  of  the  power  and  importance 
of  his  forfeited  kinsman,  answered  with  equally  grim 
brevity  "  I'se  bell  the  cat."  But  while  he  spoke,  the 
general  enemy,  mad  with  arrogance  and  self-confidence, 
and  not  believing  in  any  power  or  boldness  which  could 
stop  him  in  his  career,  forestalled  the  necessity.  He 
came  to  the  kirk,  where  no  doubt  he  had  heard  there  was 
some  unauthorized  assembly,  arrayed  in  black  velvet  with 
bands  of  white,  the  livery  he  had  chosen,  a  great  gold 
chain  round  his  neck,  a  hunting  horn  slung  about  him 
adorned  with  gold  and  jewels,  and  probably  a  marvel  of 


138  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

medieval  art — and  "rushed  rudlie  at  the  kirk  door." 
The  hum  of  fierce  satisfaction  which  arose  when  the 
keeper  of  the  door  challenged  the  applicant  for  admis- 
sion, and  the  answer,  "  The  Earl  of  Mar/'  rang  into  the 
silence  in  which  each  man  had  been  holding  his  breath, 
may  be  imagined.  It  was  Archibald  Bell-the-Cat,  ever 
hereafter  known  by  that  name,  who  advanced  to  meet  the 
swaggering  intruder  in  all  his  pride  of  privilege  and  place, 
but  with  a  welcome  very  different  from  that  which  the 
favorite  expected,  who  had  come,  no  doubt,  to  break  up  the 
whisperings  of  the  conspirators  and  assert  his  own  author- 
ity. Angus  pulled  the  gold  chain  from  Cochrane's  neck, 
and  said  "a  rop  would  sett  him  better/'  while  another 
Douglas  standing  by  snatched  at  the  horn.  Cochrane, 
astonished  but  not  yet  convinced  that  any  real  opposition 
was  intended,  asked  between  offence  and  alarm,  perhaps 
beginning  to  doubt  the  somber  excited  assembly,  "  My 
lords,  is  it  jest  or  earnest  ?  "  It  would  seem  that  the  grim 
and  terrible  event  of  the  execution  "over  the  Bridge  of 
Laucler  "  though  why  this  special  locality  was  chosen  we 
are  not  told,  followed  with  an  awful  rapidity.  The  chief 
offender  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  conspirators 
with  such  unhoped-for  ease  that  they  evidently  felt  no 
time  was  to  be  lost. 

"  Notwithstanding  the  lords  held  him  quiet  while  they  caused 
certain  armed  men  pass  to  the  King's  pavilion,  and  two  or  three 
wyse  men  with  them,  and  gave  the  King  fair  and  pleasant  words, 
till  they  had  laid  hands  on  all  his  servants,  and  took  them  and 
hanged  them  over  the  Bridge  of  Lander  before  the  King's  eyes, 
and  brought  in  the  King  himself  to  the  council.  Thereafter  in- 
continent they  brought  out  Cochrane  and  his  hands  bound  with 
ane  tow,  behind  his  back,  who  desired  them  to  take  ane  of  his 
own  pavilion  tows  [cords]  which  were  of  silk  and  bind  his  hands, 
for  he  thought  shame  to  be  bound  with  ane  hemp  tow  lyk  ane 
thief e.  The  lords  answered  and  said,  '  He  was  worse  than  a 
thiefe,  he  was  ane  traitour  and  deserved  no  better,'  " 


JAMES  III :    THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  139 

The  last  despairing  bravado  of  the  condemned  man  de- 
siring that  his  hands  might  be  bound  with  a  silken  cord 
at  least,  the  horror  and  wrath  of  the  pale  King,  helpless, 
looking  on,  forced  into  the  assembly  of  the  lords  to  wit- 
ness their  pitiless  vengeance,  are  painfully  tragical  and 
terrible.  All  James's  favorite  attendants,  the  friends  of 
his  retired  leisure  and  sharers  in  the  occupations  he  loved, 
were  thus  executed  before  his  eyes — all  but  a  certain 
young  Ramsay,  who  was  at  least  a  gentleman,  and  who,  to 
save  his  life,  leapt  up  behind  his  master  upon  the  horse 
which  the  King  was  compelled  to  mount  to  see  the  dread- 
ful deed  accomplished.  Ramsay's  life  was  spared,  not  to 
the  advantage  of  Scotland  as  became  afterwards  apparent. 

The  historical  student  will  not  fail  to  note  how  close 
in  almost  every  particular  is  this  grim  incident  to  the  ca- 
tastrophe of  Piers  Gaveston  in  England  in  a  previous  age. 

The  state  of  affairs  in  Scotland  after  this  extraordinary 
event  was  more  extraordinary  still,  if  possible.  James 
was  conveyed  to  Edinburgh, 

"  with  certain  lords  in  companie  with  him  that  took  hold  on  him 
and  keeped  him  in  the  said  castle  and  served  and  honoured  him  as 
ane  prince  ought  to  be  in  all  things  :  for  he  was  not  put  there  as 
a  prisoner,  but  for  the  maintaining  of  the  commonweill  :  gave 
him  leave  to  use  all  his  directions,  gifts,  and  casualties  at  his 
pleasure.  For  nothing  was  derogat  from  him  by  reason  of  his 
authority,  and  all  letters  was  given  and  proclamations  made  and 
printed  in  his  name  lykas  they  were  before  at  his  inputting,  nor 
no  regent  nor  governour  was  chosen  at  that  time,  but  every  lord 
within  his  own  bounds  was  sworn  to  minister  justice  and  to  pun- 
ish theft  and  slaughter  within  themselves,  or  else  to  bring  the 
doers  of  the  same  to  the  King's  justice  at  Edinburgh." 

"Thus  there  was  peace  and  rest  in  the  country  the 
space  of  three-quarters  of  a  year,"  says  Pitscottie.  This, 
however,  is  a  mistake,  for  the  time  of  the  King's  retire- 
ment was  only  three  or  four  months,  from  St.  Magdalene's 
Day  to  Michaelmas.  Short  or  long,  it  was  one  of  the 


140  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

most  curious  moments  of  interregnum  that  history  knows. 
James  was  conveyed  back  to  Edinburgh  with  every  show 
of  respect,  attended  by  the  triumphant  lords,  who  de- 
spised his  milder  virtues,  his  preferences  and  tastes,  not 
one  of  whom  could  manage  either  pencil  or  lute,  who 
cared  for  none  of  these  things — while  his  strained  eyes 
could  still  see  nothing  but  the  vision,  against  the  day- 
light, the  impromptu  gibbet  of  the  high-arched  bridge 
over  the  Border  stream,  where  his  familiar  friends  had 
been  strung  up  with  every  sign  of  infamy.  He  had  to 
contain  within  himself  the  rage,  the  shame,  the  grief 
and  loneliness  of  his  heart,  and  endure  as  he  best  could 
the  exultation  which  his  captors  would  scarcely  attempt 
to  conceal.  The  historians  tell  us  little  or  nothing  of  the 
Queen,  Margaret  of  Denmark,  to  whom  James  had  been 
married  for  several  years,  and  who  had  brought  with  her 
the  full  allegiance  of  the  isles,  the  Hebrides,  which  up  to 
that  time  had  paid  a  tribute  to  the  Scandinavian  kingdom, 
and  Orkney  and  Shetland  which  were  the  Queen's  portion. 
Whether  he  found  any  comfort  in  her  and  in  his  children, 
when  he  was  thus  brought  back  to  them  to  the  castle, 
which  would  seem  to  have  been  their  favorite  residence, 
we  are  not  told.  At  all  events  the  shame  of  such  a  re- 
turn, and  of  the  captivity  which  was  veiled  by  so  many 
ironical  appearances  of  freedom,  must  have  been  grievous 
to  him,  even  as  reflected  in  the  eyes  of  his  foreign  wife, 
or  the  wondering  questions  on  his  sudden  return  of  his 
baby  son. 

How  this  strange  state  of  things  was  brought  to  an  end 
it  is  difficult  to  tell,  for  the  story  is  confused  and  trouble- 
some. According  to  Pitscottie,  James's  private  friends 
advised  him  first  to  take  counsel  with  the  Earl  of  Douglas, 
the  long-forfeited  and  banished  Earl,  represented  as  being 
then  imprisoned  in  Edinburgh,  which  is  clearly  apocry- 
phal :  and  afterwards  with  the  Duke  of  Albany,  to  whom 


JAMES  III :    THE  MAN  OF  PEACE. 

Pitscottie  is  throughout  very  favorable,  making  no  men- 
tion of  his  undoubted  treachery.  For  whatever  may  be 
the  actual  truth  of  all  the  curious  and  confused  movements 
that  were  going  on,  it  appears  to  be  beyond  doubt  that 
Albany — though  he  had  lately  visited  the  English  Court 
and  formed  a  treasonable  bargain  with  Edward  IV  to  de- 
throne James,  and  to  be  himself  made  King  in  dependence 
upon  England — now  acted  like  a  true  brother.  His  first 
use  of  his  alliance  with  Edward  seems  to  have  been  for 
the  advantage  of  the  sovereign  whom  he  intended  to  dis- 
place, a  curious  paradox  of  which  we  can  offer  no  explana- 
tion. In  this  magnanimous  act  he  had  the  support  of  the 
English  who  had  engaged  to  help  him,  as  the  documents 
prove,  in  so  different  an  enterprise  :  all  which  is  very  be- 
wildering. Accompanied  by  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  and 
a  small  army,  he  suddenly  appeared  in  Edinburgh  to  de- 
liver the  royal  prisoner.  There  would  seem  to  have  been 
no  fighting  of  an^  kind,  nor  any  attempt  on  the  part  of 
Albany  to  dethrone  his  brother — nothing,  indeed,  but 
what  would  appear  the  most  magnanimous  action  on  his 
part,  were  not  those  secret  treaties  in  existence  bearing  a 
silent  testimony  against  him.  When  the  lords  heard  of 
the  coming  of  this  expedition,  which  occurred  in  August 
1482  (Albany  having  escaped  in  1479,  three  years  before), 
they  "drew  themselves  together  to  ane  council,"  appar- 
ently to  watch  the  proceedings  of  the  invaders. 

"  Soon  thereafter  compeired  the  Duke  of  Albanie  and  the  Duke 
of  Gloucester  within  the  town  of  Edinburgh,  with  the  number 
of  ane  thousand  gentlemen,  and  entered  within  the  Tolbooth 
thereof  before  the  lords  of  Scotland,  who  were  sitting  at  ane 
council  at  that  time,  and  there  very  reverently  saluted  the  Duke 
of  Albanie,  reverenced  him  and  welcomed  him  home,  and  re- 
quired of  him  what  was  his  petition.  He  answered,  '  I  desire 
the  King's  grace,  my  brother,  to  be  put  to  libertie,'  which  was 
granted  to  him  incontinent.  But  the  Chancellor  answered  and 
said,  *  My  lord,  we  will  grant  you  your  desires ;  but  as  to  that 


142  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

man  that  is  with  you,  we  know  him  not,  nor  yet  will  we  grant 
nothing  to  his  desire.'  " 

This  speech,  which  breathes  that  undying  defiance  of 
English  interference  which  was  the  very  inspiration  of 
Scotland,  is  too  characteristic  not  to  be  genuine.  "  That 
man"  was  Eichard,  afterwards  Richard  III,  "  Crookback 
Richard/'  the  bitter  and  powerful  hunchback  of  Shake- 
speare, whom  other  authorities  have  endeavored  in  vain 
to  persuade  us  to  regard  in  a  more  favorable  light.  What- 
ever he  might  be  in  other  aspects,  in  Scotland  he  was 
merely  Albany's  companion,  silently  aiding  in  what  seems 
a  most  legitimate  and  honorable  mission.  The  only  way 
the  historians  can  find  of  reconciling  this  strangely  virtu- 
ous and  exemplary  behavior  with  the  secret  engagements 
between  Albany  and  England  is  by  the  conjecture  that  the 
lords  of  Scotland  were  so  evidently  indisposed  to  favor 
Albany,  and  there  was  so  little  feeling  shown  towards  him 
by  any  part  of  the  population,  that  the  treason  was  si- 
lently abandoned,  and  in  the  hopelessness  of  playing  a 
treasonable  part  he  played  a  magnanimous  one,  with  the 
utmost  grace  and  semblance  of  sincerity ;  which  is  a  be- 
wildering conclusion.  In  any  case  he  was  the  deliverer 
of  his  brother.  It  would  seem  to  be  the  fact,  however, 
that  James's  deliverance  was  much  aided  by  the  attitude  of 
the  burghers  of  Edinburgh,  who  were,  as  so  often,  on  the 
King's  side — and  to  whom  the  character  of  a  patron  of 
the  arts,  and  promoter  of  so  many  persons  of  their  own 
class  into  his  friendship,  would  naturally  be  as  great  a  rec- 
ommendation as  it  was  an  offense  to  the  others.  Their 
action  at  this  period  excited  the  King's  gratitude  so  much 
that  he  conferred  upon  the  city  a  special  charter,  securing 
the  independence  of  their  municipal  government,  as  well 
as  their  right  to  levy  customs  in  the  port  of  Leith,  and 
also,  it  is  said,  a  sign  of  these  privileges,  in  the  shape  of 
the  standard  called  the  Blue  Blanket,  which  still  re- 


JAMES  III :    THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  143 

mains  in  the  possession  of  the  Edinburgh  guilds,  with  lib- 
erty to  display  it  for  their  king,  country,  and  city  rights, 
when  occasion  calls. 

The  two  Dukes  of  Albany  and  Gloucester  marched  to- 
gether to  the  castle,  preceded  by  heralds,  to  claim  the 
King  from  the  officials  who  had  him  in  charge.  One  can 
imagine  the  mingled  relief  and  humiliation  of  James  when 
delivered  from  that  stronghold  by  the  brother  who  had 
escaped  from  it  by  night,  within  a  few  hours  of  the  time 
when  he  had  been  ordered  for  execution,  and  who  in  the 
meantime  had  been  an  exile.  There  is  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  he  was  aware  of  the  secret  understanding  with 
England  to  which  his  brother  had  set  his  seal,  so  that 
there  was  nothing  to  lessen  the  intensity  of  the  coals  of 
fire  thus  heaped  upon  his  head.  No  doubt  all  Edinburgh 
was  in  the  streets  to  watch  that  strange  sight,  as  the 
King  rode  from  the  castle  gates,  past  the  great  Church 
of  St.  Giles,  and  down  the  long  line  of  the  Canongate  to 
Holyrood,  making  his  emancipation  visible  to  all.  Ap- 
parently he  had  not  left  the  castle  since  he  was  brought 
into  it  in  shame  and  misery  after  the  fatal  episode  at 
Lauder,,  One  wonders  how  he  looked  upon  the  crowd 
which  no  doubt  would  throng  after  him  with  acclama- 
tions— whether  thankfully  and  cheerfully  in  the  pleasure 
of  release,  or  with  a  revengeful  sense  of  how  little  he 
owed  to  their  easy  applauses.  It  is  said  that  Albany 
rode  behind  him  on  the  same  horse  as  an  exhibition  of 
amity.  It  is  very  probable  that  James  would  find  bitter- 
ness in  that  too,  as  another  humiliation. 

The  King  was  no  sooner  free  than  he  made  it  evident 
that  he  had  not  forgiven  the  humiliation  and  shame  to 
which  he  had  been  subjected.  He  imprisoned  in  their 
turn  a  number  of  the  lords  who  had  been  foremost  in  the 
death  of  Cochrane,  and  would  have  "justified"  them  we 
are  told,  but  for  the  interference  of  Angus — now  too 


144  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

great  apparently  for  James  to  touch — and  Albany.  For 
some  time  after  the  latter  remained  with  his  brother, 
fulfilling  the  functions  of  chief  counselor  and  Prime 
Minister.  But  whether  he  displayed  his  ambition  and 
evil  intentions,  or  the  old  jealousy  and  terrors  of  James 
got  the  upper  hand  as  the  lords  again  became  suspicious 
of  him,  it  is  difficult  to  tell.  At  all  events  Albany  was 
forced  to  escape  once  more  for  his  life,  and  again  took 
refuge  in  France,  where  either  now  or  previously,  for  the 
chronology  is  difficult  to  follow,  he  had  made  a  great 
marriage.  Here  he  disappears  altogether  from  Scottish 
history,  and  not  long  after  from  life,  having  been  killed 
by  accident  in  a  tournament.  Had  Albany  been  the 
elder  instead  of  the  younger  brother  it  seems  very  prob- 
able that  a  dark  chapter  might  have  been  left  out  of  the 
history  of  Scotland,  and  a  third  patriotic  and  energetic 
King  carried  on  the  traditions  of  the  first  and  second 
James. 

But  it  was  scarcely  to  be  looked  for  that,  after  all  the 
dissensions  between  the  King  and  the  lords,  everything 
should  settle  into  harmony  again.  James  is  said  to  have 
removed  to  Stirling  from  Edinburgh,  which  no  doubt  had 
acquired  painful  associations  to  him  from  the  time  of  his 
enforced  residence  there — and  to  have  resumed  or  com- 
pleted the  buildings  in  which  he  had  taken  so  much 
pleasure — especially  the  great  hall  of  Stirling  Castle,  with 
all  its  grotesque  and  curious  ornamentation,  which  seems 
to  prove  that  Scotland  Avas  still  much  behind  in  refine- 
ment, though  with  a  barbaric  inspiration  of  her  own. 
Whether  the  renewed  tumults  began  by  the  appropriation 
of  certain  Church  lands  hitherto  in  the  power  of  the  Homes, 
for  the  endowment  of  the  King's  ne\v  chapel,  it  is  difficult 
to  tell,  a  similar  reason  having  been  already  alleged  for  dis- 
turbances in  which  the  Duke  of  Albany  was  the  antagonist 
of  that  po\verf ul  family ;  at  all  events  a  very  small  matter 


JAMES  III :  THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  145 

was  enough  to  awake  again  all  the  old  rancors.  The 
malcontents  headed  by  the  same  men  who  had  already 
inflicted  so  much  suffering  and  shame  upon  the  King  be- 
gan to  draw  together  in  alarming  numbers.  Eoused  from 
among  his  more  congenial  occupations  by  this  renewed 
commotion,  James  sent  a  herald  to  ask  the  reason  of  their 
assembling  :  but  the  herald  was  disrepectf  ully  treated  and 
his  letters  torn  in  pieces,  an  insult  which  seems  to  have 
convinced  the  King  that  the  strongest  measures  of  de- 
fense were  necessary.  He  is  said  to  have  strongly  fortified 
Stirling,  where  Prince  James,  the  heir  of  the  kingdom, 
now  a  boy  of  fifteen  or  sixteen,  was.  Perhaps  the  King 
was  suspicious  of  the  boy,  perhaps  his  old  terrors  as  to 
the  danger  to  his  life  which  was  to  arise  from  his  own 
family  had  returned  to  him  :  for  the  restrictions  under 
which  young  James  was  left  were  exceedingly  severe  and 
arbitrary.  No  man  was  to  be  allowed  to  enter  the  castle, 
great  or  small,  till  the  King's  return,  nor  was  the  Prince 
to  be  allowed  to  pass  the  gates  "  to  no  game,  nor  to  meet 
with  no  man."  Pitscottie  says  that  Edinburgh  Castle 
was  also  strengthened,  and  the  King's  treasury  placed  in 
it  and  all  his  valuables  laid  up  there.  When  these  pre- 
cautions were  taken  James  embarked  "in  ane  ship  of 
Captane  "VVoode's  " — probably  the  most  legitimate  way  in 
which  he  could  have  traveled,  the  vessel  being  that  of 
the  Admiral,  Andrew  Wood,  the  greatest  sailor  in  Scotland 
— and  went  to  Fife,  from  whence  he  marched  to  the  north, 
calling  the  nobles  of  the  northern  counties  round  him, 
and  gathering  an  army  with  which  to  oppose  the  greater 
lords  and  lairds  who  awaited  him  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Firth  of  Forth.  James's  unusual  energy  must  have 
equally  roused  and  alarmed  the  rebels,  against  whom  the 
royal  name  was  as  a  strong  tower.  That  such  men  as 
Angus  and  the  other  great  nobles  of  Scotland,  who  had 
reduced  their  King  to  a  puppet  with  such  entire  success, 
10 


146  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

should  now  feel  it  necessary  to  get  possession  of  Prince 
James  in  order  to  confer  dignity  on  their  proceedings 
seems  very  strange  ;  but  perhaps  when  rebellion  comes  to 
the  dignity  of  a  pitched  battle  its  flags  and  pretensions 
are  of  more  importance  than  when  it  can  so  order  matters 
as  to  put  on  an  appearance  of  acting  in  the  King's  own 
interests,  as  at  Lauder.  And  how  far  the  Prince  might 
be  an  independent  actor  in  this  troubled  drama  there  is 
no  evidence  to  show.  He  had  arrived  at  an  age  when 
youths  in  these  early-maturing  days  acted  for  themselves  ; 
even  in  our  own  a  lad  of  sixteen  would  scarcely  allow  his 
name  to  be  employed  against  his  father  without  some  pro- 
test, and  could  not  be  treated  as  a  child  in  a  conflict  so 
momentous.  Therefore  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  imagine 
that  the  Prince  was  entirely  guiltless.  And  the  spectator 
cannot  but  enter  with  warmth  into  the  feelings  of  the 
King  when  he  discovered  what  had  been  done,  and  that 
his  heir  was  in  the  enemy's  camp,  giving  substance  and 
reason  to  their  rebellion. 

There  is  a  curious  story  told  of  how  Lord  Lindsay  of  the 
Byres,  a  fierce  and  grim  baron  of  Fife,  presented  on  the 
very  eve  of  the  battle  "  a  great  gray  courser  "  to  the  King, 
assuring  him  that  were  he  ever  in  extremity  that  horse 
would  carry  him,  "  either  to  fly  or  to  follow,"  better  than 
any  horse  in  Scotland,  "if  well  sitten  " — a  present  which 
James  accepted,  and  which  conies  in  as  part  of  the  para- 
phernalia of  fate.  On  the  morning  of  the  day  of  battle 
the  King  mounted  this  horse,  and  "  rude  to  ane  hill  head 
to  see  the  manner  of  the  cuming  "  of  his  enemies  against 
him.  He  saw  the  host  defiling  "  in  three  battells,"  with 
six  thousand  men  in  each,  their  spears  shining,  their  ban- 
ners waving,  Homes  and  Hepburns  in  the  front,  with 
Merse  and  Teviotdale  and  all  the  forces  of  the  Border, 
and  the  men  of  Lothian  in  the  rear  :  while  in  the  main 
body  rose  the  ensigns  of  all  the  great  lords  who  had  already 


JAMES  III :  THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  147 

beaten  and  humbled  him — Bell-the-Cat  and  the  other 
barons  who  had  hanged  his  friends  before  his  eyes — but 
now  bearing  his  own  royal  standard,  with  his  son  among 
them,  the  bitterest  thought  of  all.  James  sat  upon  his 
fleet  horse,  presented  to  him  the  night  before  with 
such  an  ominous  recommendation,  and  saw  his  enemies 
bearing  down  upon  him — his  enemies  and  his  son. 
"  Then,"  says  the  chronicler,  "  he  remembered  the  words 
which  the  witch  had  spoken  to  him  many  days  before,  that 
he  should  be  suddenly  destroyed  and  put  down  by  the 
nearest  of  his  kin."  For  this  he  had  allowed  the  murder 
of  young  Mar  and  driven  Alexander  of  Albany  into  exile  ; 
but  who  can  wonder  if  in  his  stricken  soul  he  now  per- 
ceived or  imagined  that  no  man  can  cheat  the  Fates  ? 
His  own  son,  his  boy  !  Some  nobler  poignancy  of  anguish 
than  the  mere  sick  despair  and  panic  of  the  coward  must 
surely  have  been  in  his  mind  as  he  realized  this  last  and 
crowning  horror.  The  profound  moral  discouragement 
of  a  man  caught  in  the  toils,  and  for  whom  no  escape  was 
possible  ;  the  sickening  sense  of  betrayal  ;  the  wide  coun- 
try before  him,  in  which  there  might  still  be  found  some 
peaceful  refuge  far  from  these  distractions  and  contradic- 
tions of  men ;  the  whirl  of  the  dreadful  yet  beautiful 
sight,  companies  marching  and  ever  marching,  spears  and 
helmets  shining,  banners  waving,  and  all  against  him — a 
man  who  had  never  any  pleasure  in  the  pomp  and  circum- 
stance of  war.  Who  can  wonder  as  these  hurrying 
thoughts  overwhelmed  his  mind,  and  the  fleet  courser 
pawed  the  turf,  and  the  wild  sweet  air  blew  free  in  his 
face  inviting  him  to  escape,  to  flee,  to  find  somewhere 
comfort  and  peace — that  such  a  man  should  have  yielded 
to  the  mad  impulse,  and  in  an  access  of  despair,  longing 
for  the  wings  of  a  dove  that  he  might  flee  away  and  be  at 
rest,  have  turned  from  the  rising  tumult  and  fled  ? 

Of  all  the  ironies  of  Fate  there  could  be  none  more 


148  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

bitter  than  that  which  drove  the  hapless  fugitive,  ingrow- 
ing consciousness  of  shame,  like  a  straw  before  the  wind, 
across  the  famous  field  of  Bannockburn.  What  an  asso- 
ciation to  be  connected  with  that  victorious  name  !  He 
had  aimed  at  Stirling,  but  wild  with  despair  and  panic 
and  misery  missed  the  way.  As  the  gray  courser  entered 
the  village  of  Bannockburn  at  full  flight  a  woman  draw- 
ing water  let  fall  her  "  pig  "  or  earthen  pot  in  affright, 
and  startled  the  horse  ;  and  the  King  "  being  evill  sitten  " 
(having  a  bad  seat)  fell  from  his  saddle  before  the  door 
of  the  mill.  The  sight  of  the  strange  cavalier  in  his 
splendid  armor,  covered  with  foam  and  dust,  borne  to 
the  earth  like  a  log  by  the  weight  of  his  armor,  appalled 
the  simple  people,  who  dragged  him  inside  the  mill  and 
covered  him  where  he  lay  with  some  rough  horsecloth, 
not  knowing  what  to  do.  When  he  had  come  to  himself 
James  implored  the  wondering  people  to  fetch  him  a 
priest  before  he  died.  "  Who  are  you  ? "  they  asked, 
standing  over  him.  What  a  world  of  time  had  passed  in 
that  wild  ride  !  how  many  ages  since  the  dying  fugitive 
lying  on  the  dusty  floor  and  covered  with  the  miller's  rug 
was  James  Stewart,  at  the  head  of  a  gallant  army  ! 
"  This  morning,"  he  said,  with  a  bitter  comprehension  of 
all  that  had  passed  since  then,  "  I  was  your  King."  The 
miller's  wife  ran  forth  to  her  door  calling  for  a  priest, 
and  someone  who  was  passing  by  answered  her  call  ;  but 
whether  he  was  really  a  priest,  or  only  one  of  the  strag- 
glers of  the  rebel  army,  seems  uncertain.  He  came  into 
the  mill,  hearing  no  doubt  the  cries  of  the  astonished 
couple  that  it  was  the  King,  and  kneeling  down  recog- 
nized the  fallen  monarch  ;  but  instead  of  hearing  his 
confession,  drew  a  knife  and  stabbed  him  three  or  four 
times  in  the  breast.  Thus  miserably  ended  James  Stew- 
art, the  third  of  the  name. 

Of  all  the  tragical  conclusions  to  which  his  family  had 


JAMES  III  :  THE  MAN  OF  PEACE.  149 

come  this  was  the  most  deplorable  as  his  life  had  been  the 
least  satisfactory.  Whether  there  was  more  than  weak- 
ness to  be  alleged  against  him  it  is  now  impossible  to  tell ; 
and  whether  his  favorite  companions  and  occupations 
proved  a  spirit  touched  to  finer  issues  than  those  about 
him,  or  showed  only,  as  his  barons  thought,  a  preference 
for  low  company  and  paltry  pursuits  of  peace.  But  how- 
soever his  patronage  of  the  arts,  the  buildings  he  has  left 
to  Scotland,  or  the  tradition  of  the  music  and  gentle 
pleasures  which  he  loved,  may  justify  him  to  the  reader, 
it  is  at  least  clear  that  his  stewardry  of  his  kingdom  was 
a  miserable  failure,  and  his  life  a  loss  and  harm  to  his 
country.  Instead  of  promoting  the  much-interrupted 
progress  of  her  development,  so  far  as  his  individual  in- 
fluence went,  he  arrested  and  hindered  it.  And,  difficult 
as  the  position  of  affairs  had  been  when  he  succeeded  at 
seven  years  old  to  his  father's  uncompleted  labors,  the 
situation  which  he  left  behind  him,  the  country  torn  in 
two,  one  half  of  his  subjects  in  arms  against  the  other, 
his  son's  name  opposed  to  his  own,  and  every  national 
benefit  postponed  to  the  settlement  of  this  quarrel,  was 
ten  times  more  difficult  and  terrible.  He  was  the  first  of 
his  name  whose  influence  was  all  unfavorable  to  the  prog- 
ress of  the  nation,  not  only  by  evil  fortune,  but  by  the 
disasters  of  a  mind  not  sufficient  for  the  weight  and  bur- 
den of  his  time.  He  thus  died  ignominiously,  in  the 
month  of  June  1488,  having  reigned  twenty-eight  years 
and  lived  thirty-five — a  short  lifetime  for  so  much  trouble 
and  general  misfortune. 


ARMS  OF  JAMES  IV.  OF  SCOTLAND. 

(From  King's  College  Chapel,  Old  Aberdeen.) 


CHAPTER  IV. 


JAMES  IV  .*  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT. 

THE  graver  records  of  the  nation  pause  at  the  point  to 
which  we  have  arrived.  The  tale  leaves  both  battle-field 
and  council  chamber,  though  there  is  an  inevitable  some- 
thing of  both  in  the  chronicle  as  there  is  something  of 
daily  bread  in  the  most  festive  day.  But  it  is  not  with 
these  grave  details  that  the  historian  occupies  himself. 
The  most  serious  page  takes  a  glow  from  the  story  it  has 
to  tell,  the  weighty  matters  of  national  life  and  develop- 
150 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  151 

ment  stand  aside,  and  it  is  a  knight  of  romance  who  stands 
forth  to  occupy  the  field.  The  story  of  James,  the  fourth 
of  the  name,  is  one  of  those  passages  of  veritable  history 
in  which  there  is  scarcely  anything  that  might  not  be  bor- 
rowed from  a  tale  of  chivalry.  It  is  pure  romance  from 
beginning  to  end. 

Of  the  character  and  personality  of  the  boy  whose  edu- 
cation was  carried  on  under  strict  surveillance  at  Stirling 
we  know  nothing  whatever,  until  he  suddenly  appears  be- 
fore us  in  the  enemy's  camp,  whether  with  his  own  con- 
sent or  not,  or  how  much,  if  with  his  own  consent,  with 
any  knowledge  of  what  he  was  about,  it  is  difficult  to  tell. 
His  mother  had  died  while  he  was  still  a  child,  and  prob- 
ably for  the  last  few  years  of  his  much  disturbed  life 
James  III  had  but  little  attention  to  spare  for  his  son. 
If  there  is  any  truth  in  a  curious  story  told  by  Pitscottie 
of  a  search  on  board  Sir  Andrew  Wood's  ship  for  the  mur- 
dered King,  while  yet  the  fact  of  his  death  was  unknown, 
and  the  Prince's  wistful  address  to  the  great  sailor,  "  Sir, 
are  ye  my  father  ?"  we  might  suppose  that  the  boy  had 
been  banished  altogether  from  his  father's  presence.  But 
perhaps  this  is  too  slender  a  foundation  to  build  upon. 
There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  after  the  battle, 
little  honorable  to  either  side,  and  lost  by  the  King's 
party  almost  before  begun,  from  which  he  fled  in  a  panic 
so  ignominious  and  fatal,  there  was  a  moment  of  great 
perplexity  and  dismay,  when  King  James's  fate  remained 
a  mystery,  and  the  rebel  nobles  with  the  boy-prince 
among  them  knew  not  what  to  do  or  to  say,  in  the  doubt 
whether  he  was  dead  or  alive,  whether  he  might  not 
reappear  at  any  moment  with  a  host  from  the  Highlands 
or  from  France,  or  even  England,  at  his  back.  When 
they  had  fully  realized  their  unsatisfactory  victory  they 
marched  to  Edinburgh,  with  the  Prince  always  among 
them  and  a  chill  horror  about  them,  unaware  what  way 


152  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

to  look  for  news  of  the  King,  The  rush  of  the  people  to 
watch  their  return  with  their  drooping  banners  and  faces 
full  of  consternation,  and  wonder  at  the  unaccustomed 
sight  of  the  young  Prince  which  yet  was  not  exciting 
enough  to  counterbalance  the  anxiety,  the  wonder,  the 
perpetual  question  what  had  become  of  the  King, — must 
have  been  as  a  menace  the  more  to  the  perplexed  leaders, 
who  knew  that  a  fierce  mob  might  surge  up  into  warfare 
at  any  moment,  or  a  rally  from  the  castle  cut  off  their  dis- 
couraged and  weary  troops.  Where  was  the  King  ?  Had 
he  perhaps  got  before  them  to  Edinburgh  ?  was  he  there 
on  that  height,  misty  with  smoke  and  sunshine,  turning 
against  them  the  great  gun,  which  had  been  forged  for 
use  against  the  Douglas  :  or  ready  to  appear  from  over  the 
Firth  terrible  with  a  new  army  ;  or  in  the  ships,  most 
likely  of  all,  with  the  great  admiral  who  lay  there  watch- 
ing, ready  to  carry  off  a  royal  fugitive  or  bring  back 
strange  allies  to  revenge  the  scorn  that  had  been  done  to 
the  King  ?  The  lords  decided  to  take  their  dispirited  and 
broken  array  to  Leith  instead  of  going  to  Holyrood,  and 
there  collected  together  to  hold  a  council  of  war.  Among 
the  confused  reports  brought  to  them  of  what  one  man 
and  another  had  seen  or  heard  was  one,  more  likely  than 
the  rest,  of  boats  which  had  been  seen  to  steal  down  Forth 
and  make  for  the  Yellow  Carvel  lying  in  the  estuary,  with 
apparently  wounded  men  on  board.  They  sent  accord- 
ingly to  summon  Sir  Andrew  Wood  to  their  presence. 
The  sailor  probably  cared  nothing  about  politics  any 
further  than  that  he  held  for  the  King — and  furioils  with 
the  Lords  who  had  withstood  his  Majesty  declined  to  come 
unless  hostages  were  sent  for  his  safety.  When  this  was 
accorded,  the  old  sea-lion,  the  first  admiral  of  Scotland, 
came  grnffly  from  his  ships  to  answer  their  questions. 
Whether  there  was  any  resemblance  between  the  two  men, 
as  he  stood  with  his  cloak  wrapped  round  him  defiant  be- 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  153 

fore  the  rebel  lords,  or  if  the  Prince  had,  as  is  possible, 
been  so  long  absent  from  his  father  that  the  vague  outline 
of  a  man  enveloped  and  muffled  deceived  him,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  say.  But  there  is  a  tone  of  penetrating  reality  in 
the  "  Sir,  are  ye  my  father  ?"  of  the  troubled  boy,  perhaps 
only  then  aroused  to  a  full  comprehension  of  his  position 
and  the  sense  that  he  was  himself  guiltily  involved  in  the 
proceedings  which  had  brought  some  mysterious  and  un- 
known fate  upon  the  King.  It  is  difficult  to  see  why,  ac- 
cepting from  Pitscottie  all  the  rest  of  this  affecting  narra- 
tive, the  modern  historian  should  cutout  this  as  unworthy 
of  belief,  "  Who  answered,"  continues  the  chronicler, 
"  with  tears  falling  from  his  eyes/* 

"  '  Sir,  I  am  not  your  father,  but  I  was  a  servand  to  your  father, 
and  sail  be  to  his  authoritie  till  I  die,  and  ane  enemy  to  them 
that  was  the  occasion  of  his  doon-putting.'  The  lords  inquired 
of  Captain  Wood  if  he  knew  of  the  King  or  where  he  was.  He 
answered  he  knew  nothing  of  the  King  nor  where  he  was.  Then 
they  speired  what  they  were  that  came  out  of  the  field  and 
passed  into  his  ships.  He  answered  :  '  It  was  I  and  my  brother, 
who  were  ready  to  have  waired  our  lives  with  the  King  in  his 
defence.'  Then  they  said,  '  He  is  not  in  your  ships  ? '  who  an- 
swered again,  '  He  is  not  in  my  ship,  but  would  to  God  he  were 
in  my  ship  safelie,  I  should  defend  him  and  keep  him  skaithless 
frae  all  the  treasonable  creatures  who  has  murdered  him,  for  I 
think  to  see  the  day  when  they  shall  be  hanged  and  quartered 
for  their  demerites.' " 

The  lords  would  fain  have  silenced  this  rude  sailor,  but 
having  given  hostages  for  his  safe  return  were  obliged  to 
let  him  go.  There  could  not  be  a  more  vivid  picture  of 
their  perplexity  and  trouble.  They  proceeded  to  Edin- 
burgh after  this  rebuff,  coming  in,  we  may  well  believe, 
with  little  sound  of  trumpet  or  sign  of  welcome,  and  with 
many  a  threatening  countenance  among  the  crowds  that 
gazed  wistfully  upon  the  boy  in  their  midst,  who,  if  the 
King  were  really  dead,  was  the  King — another  James, 


154:  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

There  might  be  old  men  about  watching  from  the  foot  of 
the  Cauongate  the  silent  cortege  trooping  along  the  valley 
to  Holyrood — men  who  remembered  with  all  the  force  of 
boyish  recollection  how  the  assassins  of  James  I  had  been 
dragged  and  tormented  through  Edinburgh  streets,  and 
might  wonder  and  whisper  inquiries  to  their  sons  whether 
such  a  horrible  sight  might  be  coming  again,  and  what 
part  that  pale  boy  had  in  the  dreadful  deed  ?  It  was  but 
fifty  years  since  that  catastrophe,  and  already  two  long 
minorities  had  paralyzed  the  progress  of  Scotland.  How 
the  crowding  people  must  have  eyed  him,  as  he  rode 
along,  the  slim  stripling,  so  young,  so  helpless,  in  the 
midst  of  all  these  bearded  men  !  What  part  did  he  have 
in  it  ?  Was  his  father  done  to  death  by  his  orders  ?  Was 
he  consenting  at  least  to  what  was  done  ?  Was  he  aware 
of  all  that  was  to  follow  that  hurried  ride  with  the  lords, 
into  which  he  had  been  beguiled  or  persuaded  ?  James 
III  had  to  some  degree  favored  Edinburgh,  where,  notwith- 
standing his  long  captivity  in  the  Castle,  he  had  found 
defenders  and  friends.  And  there  must  have  been  many 
in  the  crowd  who  took  part  with  the  unfortunate  monarch, 
so  mysteriously  gone  out  of  their  midst,  and  who  looked 
with  horror  upon  the  boy  who  had  something  at  least  to 
do  with  the  ruin  and  death  of  his  father.  It  was  a  somber 
entry  upon  the  future  dwelling  to  which  this  young 
James  was  to  bring  so  much  splendor  and  rejoicing. 

How  these  doubts  were  cleared  up  and  certainly  attained 
we  have  no  sure  way  of  knowing.  Pitscottie's  story  is  that 
when  the  false  priest  murdered  the  King,  he  took  up  the 
body  on  his  back  and  carried  it  away,  "but  no  man  knew 
what  he  did  with  him  or  where  he  buried  him."  Other 
authorities  speak  of  a  funeral  service  in  the  Abbey  of 
Cambuskenneth  on  the  banks  of  the  Forth — a  great  relig- 
ious establishment,  of  which  one  dark  gray  tower  alone  re- 
mains upon  the  green  meadows  by  the  winding  river  ;  and 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  155 

there  is  mention  afterwards  of  a  bloody  shirt  carried  about 
on  the  point  of  a  lance  to  excite  the  indignant  Northmen 
to  rebellion.  But  notwithstanding  these  facts  no  one 
ventures  to  say  that  James's  body  was  found  or  buried. 
Masses  for  the  dead  were  sung,  and  every  religious  honor 
paid  ;  but  so  far  as  anything  is  told  us,  these  rites  might 
have  been  performed  around  an  empty  bier.  At  last,  how- 
ever, in  some  way,  a  dolorous  certainty,  which  must  by 
many  have  been  felt  as  a  relief,  was  attained,  and  the 
young  King  was  crowned  in  Edinburgh  in  the  summer  of 
1488,  some  weeks  after  his  father's  death.  At  the  same 
time  a  Parliament  was  called,  and  the  Castle  of  Edinburgh, 
which  all  this  time  seems  to  have  kept  its  gates  closed 
and  rendered  no  submission,  was  summoned  by  the  herald 
to  yield,  "  which  was  obediently  done  at  the  King's 
command/'  says  the  chronicle.  There  was  evidently  no 
thought  of  rebellion  or  of  resisting  the  lawful  sovereign, 
so  soon  as  it  Avas  certain  which  he  was.  The  procession 
of  the  herald,  perhaps  the  Lord  Lyon  himself,  with  all  his 
pursuivants,  up  the  long  street  to  sound  the  trumpets  out- 
side the  castle  gates  and  demand  submission,  mast  have 
brightened  the  waiting  and  wondering  city  with  the  cer- 
tainty of  the  new  reign.  But  the  bravery  and  fine  colors 
of  such  a  procession,  though  made  doubly  effective  by  the 
background  of  noble  houses  and  all  the  lofty  gables  and 
great  churches  in  the  crowded  picturesque  center  at  the 
foot  of  the  Castle  Hill,  were  not  then  as  now  strange  to 
the  "  gray  metropolis  of  the  North/'  No  country  in 
Christendom  would  seem  to  have  so  changed  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Reformation  as  Scotland.  The  absence  of 
pageant  and  ceremonial,  the  discouragement  of  display, 
the  suppression  of  the  picturesque  in  action,  in  the  midst 
of  one  of  the  most  picturesque  scenes  in  the  world,  are  all 
of  modern  growth.  In  the  fifteenth  century,  and  espe- 
cially in  the  reign  that  was  now  begun,  the  town  ran  over 


156 


ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 


with  bright  color  and  splen-    ; 

did    spectacle.      When    the    b 

lists  were   formed  upon    the    R 

breezy  platform,  overlooking    j 

the    fair   plains  of  Lothian,    §r 

the  great  Firth,  and  the  sur-    ] 

rounding  circle    of   hills,  at    fc 

the  castle  gate — how  brilliant    ! 

must   have  been  both   scene    ] 

and  setting,  the  living  picture 

and  the  wonderful  frame,  and  how  every  window  would 

be  crowded  to  see  the  hundred  little  processions  of  knights 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  157 

to  the  jousts  and  ladies  to  the  tribunes,  aud  the  King  and 
Queen  riding  with  all  their  fine  attendants  "up  the  touii " 
all  the  way  from  Holyrood  !  Nor  would  the  curiosity  be 
much  less  when,  coming  in  from  the  country,  with  every 
kind  of  quaint  surrounding,  the  great  no-bles  with  their 
glittering  retinue,  the  lairds  each  with  a  little  posse  of 
stout  men-at-arms,  as  many  as  he  could  muster,  the  bur- 
gesses from  the  towns,  the  clergy  from  all  the  great  centers 
of  the  Church  on  mules  and  soft-pacing  palfreys,  would 
gather  for  the  meetings  of  Parliament.  It  scarcely  wanted 
a  knight-errant  like  the  fourth  James,  with  his  chivalrous 
tastes  and  devices,  to  fill  the  noble  town  with  brightness, 
for  all  these  fine  sights  were  familiar  to  Edinburgh.  But 
the  brightest  day  was  now  to  come. 

The  Parliament  which  assembled  in  all  the  emotion  of 
that  curious  crisis,  while  still  the  wonder  and  dismay  of 
the  King's  tragic  disappearance  were  in  the  air,  was  a 
strange  one.  It  was  evidently  convened  with  the  intention 
of  shielding  the  party  which  had  taken  arms  against  James 
III,  while  making  a  cunning  attempt  to  throw  the  blame 
on  those  who  had  stood  by  him  :  these  natural  sentiments 
being  combined  with  the  determination,  most  expedient 
in  the  circumstances,  to  reconcile  all  by  punishing  none. 
The  young  King  and  the  power  now  exercised  in  his  name 
were  in  the  hands  of  the  lords  who  had  headed  the  rebellion, 
Angus,  Home,  Bothwell,  and  the  rest ;  and  while  their  own 
safety  was  naturally  their  first  consideration,  they  had  evi- 
dently no  desire  to  stir  up  troublesome  questions  even  for 
the  fierce  joy  of  condemning  their  opponents.  Atone  or 
other  of  the  early  Parliaments  in  this  reign,  either  that  first 
held  by  way  of  smoothing  over  matters  and  preparing  such  an 
account  of  all  that  had  happened  as  might  be  promulgated 
by  foreign  ambassadors  to  their  respective  Courts — or  one 
which  followed  the  easy  settlement  of  an  attempt  at  rebel- 
lion already  referred  to,  when  the  Lord  of  Forbes  carried 


158  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

a  bloody  shirt,  supposed  to  be  that  of  King  James,  through 
the  streets  of  Aberdeen,  and  raised  a  quickly-quelled  in- 
surrection— there  occurs  the  trial  of  Sir  David  Lindsay, 
one  of  the  most  quaint  narratives  of  a  cause  celebre  ever 
•written.  The  -chronicler,  whom  we  may  quote  at  some 
length — and  whose  living  arid  graphic  narrative  none  even 
of  those  orthodox  historians  who  pretend  to  hold  lightly 
the  ever-delightful  Pitscottie,  upon  whom  at  the  same 
time  they  rely  as  their  chief  authority,  attempt  to  question 
in  this  case — was  himself  a  Lindsay,  and  specially  con- 
cerned for  the  honor  of  his  name.  The  defendant  was 
Lindsay  of  the  Byres,  one  of  the  chief  of  James  Ill's  sup- 
porters, he  who  had  given  the  King  that  ominous  gift  of 
a  fleet  courser  on  the  eve  of  the  battle.  When  he  appeared 
at  the  bar  of  the  house  so  to  speak — before  Parliament — 
the  following  "dittay"  or  indictment  was  made  against 
him  : — 

"  Lord  David  Lindsay  of  the  Byres  compeir  for  the  cruel  com- 
ing against  the  King  at  Bannokburne  with  his  father,  and  in 
giving  him  counsall  to  have  devored  his  sone,  the  King's  grace, 
here  present :  and  to  that  effect  gave  him  ane  sword  and  ane 
hors  to  fortify  him  against  his  sone  :  what  is  your  answer  heir- 
unto  ?  " 

A  more  curious  reversal  of  the  facts  of  the  case  could 
not  be,  and  the  idea  that  James  the  actual  monarch  could 
be  a  rebel  against  his  own  son,  then  simply  the  heir  to  the 
crown,  is  bewildering  in  its  grave  defiance  of  all  reason. 
There  is  not  much  wonder  that  Lindsay,  "  ane  rasch  man, 
and  of  rud  language,  albeit  he  was  stout  and  hardy  in  the 
field  and  exercised  in  war,"  burst  forth  upon  the  assembled 
knights  and  lords,  upbraiding  them  with  bringing  the 
Prince  into  their  murderous  designs  against  the  King. 
The  effect  of  his  speech  on  the  assembly  would  seem  to 
have  been  considerable,  and  it  is  very  apparent  that  the 
party  in  power  had  no  desire  to  make  any  fight,  for  the 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  159 

Chancellor  anxiously  excused  Lindsay  to  the  King  as  "  ane 
man  of  the  old  world,  that  cannot  answer  formullie  nor 
get  speech  reverentlie  in  your  Grace's  presence."  This 
roused  the  brother  of  the  culprit,  a  certain  Mr.  Patrick 
Lindsay,  otherwise  described  as  a  Churchman,  who  was 
by  no  means  content  to  see  the  head  of  his  house  thus 
described,  nor  yet  that  Lord  Lindsay  should  come  "in 
the  King's  will,"  thus  accepting  forfeiture  or  any  other 
penalties  that  might  be  pronounced  against  him.  Ac- 
cordingly he  interfered  in  the  following  remarkable 
way  :— 

"To  that  effect  he  stamped  on  his  brother's  foot  to  latt  him 
understand  that  he  was  not  content  with  the  decree  which  the 
Chancellour  proponed  to  him.  But  this  stamp  of  Mr.  Patrick's 
was  so  heavy  upon  his  brother's  foot,  who  had  ane  sair  toe  which 
was  painful  to  him,  wherefore  he  looked  to  him  and  said,  '  Ye 
were  over  pert  to  stampe  upon  my  foot ;  were  you  out  of  the 
King's  presence  I  would  overtake  you  upon  the  mouth,'  Mr. 
Patrick,  hearing  the  vain  words  of  his  brother,  pled  on  his  knees 
before  the  King  and  the  Justice,  and  made  his  petition  to  them 
in  this  manner  :  '  Sir,  if  it  will  please  your  Grace  and  your 
honorabill  counsall,  I  desire  of  your  Grace,  for  His  cause  that  is 
Judge  of  all,  that  your  Grace  will  give  me  leave  this  day  to 
speak  for  my  brother,  for  I  see  there  is  no  man  of  law  that  dare 
speak  for  him  for  fear  of  your  Grace  ;  and  although  he  and  I 
has  not  been  at  ane  this  mony  yeires,  yet  my  heart  may  not 
suffer  me  to  see  the  native  house  whereof  I  am  descended  to 
perish  ! '  So  the  King  and  the  Justice  gave  him  leave  to  speak 
for  his  brother.  Then  the  said  Mr.  Patrick  raised  off  his  knees, 
and  was  very  blythe  that  he  had  obtained  that  license  with  the 
King's  favour.  So  he  began  very  reverentlie  to  speak  in  this 
manner,  saying  to  the  whole  lords  of  Parliament,  and  to  the  rest 
of  them  that  were  accusers  of  his  brother  at  that  time,  with  the 
rest  of  the  lords  that  were  in  the  summons  of  forfaltrie,  according 
to  their  dittay,  saying  :  '  I  beseech  you  all,  my  lords,  that  be  here 
present,  for  His  sake  that  will  give  sentence  and  judgment  on 
us  all  at  the  last  day,  that  ye  will  remember  now  instantly  is 
your  time  .  .  .  therefore  now  do  all  ye  would  \  e  done  to  in  the 
administration  of  justice  to  your  neighbours  and  brethren,  who 


160  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

are  accused  of  their  lives  and  heritages  this  day,  whose  judgment 
stands  in  your  hands.  Therefore  beware  in  time,  and  open  not 
the  door  that  ye  may  not  steik.'  Be  this  Mr.  Patrick  had  ended 
his  speeches,  the  Chancellour  bid  him  say  something  in  defence 
of  his  brother,  and  to  answer  to  the  points  of  the  summons  made 
and  raised  upon  his  brother  and  the  rest  of  the  lords  and  barons. 
Then  Mr.  Patrick  answered  again  and  said:  "If  it  please  the 
King's  grace,  and  your  honours  that  are  here  present,  I  say  the 
King  should  not  sit  in  judgment  against  his  lords  and  barons, 
because  he  has  made  his  oath  of  fidelity  when  he  received  the 
crown  of  Scotland  that  he  should  not  come  in  judgment  against 
his  lords  and  barons  in  no  action  where  he  is  partie  himself. 
But  here  His  Grace  is  both  partie,  and  was  at  the  committing  of 
the  crime  himself,  therefore  he  ought  not,  neither  by  the  law  of 
God  nor  of  man,  to  sit  in  judgment  at  this  time  ;  wherefore  we 
desire  him,  in  the  name  of  God,  to  rise  and  depart  out  of  judg- 
ment, till  the  matter  be  further  discussed  conform  to  justice.'" 

This  bold  request  apparently  commended  itself  to  the 
Parliament,  for  we  hear  that  the  Chancellor  and  lords 
considered  it  reasonable,  and  the  King  was  accordingly 
desired  "  to  rise  np  and  pass  into  the  inner  tolbooth,  which," 
adds  Pitscottie,  "was  very  unpleasant  to  him  for  the 
time,  being  ane  young  prince  sittand  upon  his  royall  seat 
to  be  raised  by  his  subjects."  Mr.  Patrick  so  pressed  his 
advantage  after  this  strange  incident,  and  the  argument  of 
the  young  King's  presence  and  complicity  in  all  that  had 
happened  was  so  unanswerable,  added  to  some  inaccuracy 
in  the  indictment,  of  which  the  keen  priest  made  the  most, 
that  the  summons  was  withdrawn,  and  Lindsay  along  with 
all  the  other  barons  of  his  party  would  seem  to  have  shared 
in  the  general  amnesty,  as  probably  was  the  intention  of 
all  parties  from  the  beginning.  For  the  victors,  who 
were  victors  by  a  chance,  were  not  powerful  enough  to 
carry  matters  with  a  high  hand,  and  their  opponents, 
though  overcome,  were  too  strong  to  be  despised.  It  was 
better  for  all  to  gather  round  the  new  King,  who  had  no 
evil  antecedents  nor  anything  to  prevent  a  new  beginning 


ST.  ANTHONY'S  CHAPEL.-Page  161. 

Roi/al  Edinburgh. 


JAMES  IV :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT. 

of  the  most  hopeful  kind.  The  scene  ends  with  char- 
acteristic liveliness.  "  The  lord  David  Lindsay  was  so 
blyth  at  his  brother's  sayings  that  he  burst  forth  saying  to 
him,  '  Verrilie,  brother,  ye  have  fine  pyet  words.  I  should 
not  have  trowed,  by  St.  Amarie,  that  you  had  sic  words ' ' 
— an  amusing  tribute  of  half-scornful  gratitude  from  the 
soldier  to  the  Churchman  whose  pyet  or  magpie  words 
were  so  wonderfully  efficacious,  yet  so  despicable  in  them- 
selves, to  change  the  fate  of  a  gentleman  !  It  is  grievous 
to  find  that  the  King  was  so  displeased  at  Mr.  Patrick  and 
his  boldness  that  he  sent  him  off  to  the  Ross  of  Bute,  and 
kept  him  imprisoned  in  that  solitary  yet  beautiful  region 
for  a  whole  year. 

Notwithstanding,  however,  this  little  failure  of  respect 
to  the  sovereign,  and  the  dismal  uncertainty  and  anxiety  in 
which  his  reign  began,  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  but 
the  happiest  prospects  opening  before  the  young  King. 
Out  of  the  miserable  struggle  which  brought  him  to  the 
throne,  he  himself,  most  probably  only  awakened  to  the 
meaning  of  it  after  all  was  over,  brought  a  lifelong  re- 
morse which  he  never  threw  off,  and  which  was  increased 
by  the  melancholy  services  of  commemoration  and  ex- 
piation, the  masses  for  his  father's  soul  and  solemn 
funeral  ceremonials  whether  real  or  nominal,  at  all  of 
which  the  youth  would  have  to  be  present  with  a  sore 
and  swelling  heart.  We  are  told  that  he  went  and  un- 
burdened himself  to  the  Dean  of  the  Chapel  Royal  in 
Stirling,  his  father's  favorite  church,  which  James  III 
had  built  and  endowed,  arranging  the  services  and  music 
with,  special  personal  care.  The  Dean  received  his  con- 
fession with  kindness  seeing  him  so  penitent,  and  gave 
him  "  good  counsel  and  comfort,"  and  remained  his 
friend  and  spiritual  adviser  as  he  grew  into  manhood  ; 
but  we  are  not  told  whether  it  was  by  his  ordinance  as  a 
penance  and  constant  reminder  of  his  sin,  or  by  a  volun- 
u 


162  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

tary  mortification  of  his  own,  that  James  assumed  the 
iron  belt  which  he  wore  always  round  him  "  and  eikit  it 
from  time  to  time,"  that  is,  increased  its  size  and  weight 
as  long  as  he  lived.  This  sensibility,  which  formed  part 
of  his  chivalrous  and  generous  character,  the  noble,  sweet, 
and  lovable  nature  which  conquered  all  hearts,  at  once 
subdued  and  silenced  his  many  critics,  and  furnished 
them  with  a  reproach  which  spite  and  ill-will  could  bring 
up  against  him  when  occasion  occurred.  But  the  enemies 
were  few  and  the  lovers  many  who  surrounded  the  young 
Prince  when  the  contentions  of  the  crisis  were  oi;ce  over, 
and  the  warring  factions  conciliated  by  general  condemna- 
tions in  principle  which  hurt  nobody  so  long  as  they  were 
not  accompanied  by  confiscations  or  deprivations.  Such 
clemency  in  so  young  a  king  was  a  marvel  to  all,  the  chroni- 
clers say,  though  indeed  there  could  be  little  question  of 
clemency  on  James's  part  in  a  mutual  hushing-up,  which 
was  evidently  dictated  by  every  circumstance  of  the  time 
and  the  only  source  of  mutual  safety. 

When,  however,  he  had  arrived  at  man's  estate,  and 
makes  a  recognisable  and  individual  appearance  upon  the 
stage  of  history,  the  picture  of  him  is  one  of  the  most  at- 
tractive ever  made,  the  happiest  and  brightest  chapter  in 
the  tragic  story  of  the  Stewarts.  Youth  with  that  touch 
of  extravagance  which  becomes  it,  that  genial  wildness 
which  all  are  so  ready  to  pardon,  and  an  adventurous  dis- 
position, careless  of  personal  safety,  gave  a  charm  the 
more  to  the  magnificent  young  King,  handsome,  noble, 
brave,  and  full  of  universal  friendliness  and  sympathy, 
who  comes  forth  smiling  in  the  face  of  fate,  ready  to  turn 
back  every  gloomy  augury  and  bring  in  another  golden 
age.  Pitscottie's  description  is  full  of  warmth  and  vivid 
reality  : — 

"In  this  mean  time  was  good  peace  and  rest  in  Scotland  an4 
great  love  betwixt  the  King  and  all  his  subjects,  and  was  wel] 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  103 

loved  by  them  all :  for  he  was  verrie  noble,  and  though  the  vice 
of  covetousness  rang  over  meikle  in  his  father  it  rang  not  in  him- 
self ;  nor  yet  pykthankis  nor  cowards  should  be  authorised  in 
his  companie,  nor  yet  advanced  ;  neither  used  he  the  council 
but  of  his  lords,  whereby  he  won  the  hearts  of  the  whole  no- 
bilitie  ;  so  that  he  could  ride  out  through  any  part  of  the  realme, 
him  alone,  unknowing  that  he  was  King  ;  and  would  lie  in  poor 
men's  houses  as  he  had  been  ane  travellour  through  the  country, 
and  would  require  of  them  where  he  lodged,  where  the  King 
was,  and  what  ane  man  lie  was,  and  how  he  used  himself  to- 
wards his  subjects,  and  what  they  spoke  of  him  through  the 
countrie.  And  they  would  answer  him  as  they  thought  good, 
so  by  this  doing  the  King  heard  the  common  bruit  of  himself. 
This  Prince  was  wondrous  hardie  and  diligent  in  execution  of 
justice,  and  loved  nothing  so  well  as  able  men  and  horses  ;  there- 
fore at  sundry  times  he  would  cause  make  proclamations  through 
the  land  to  all  and  sundry  his  lords  and  barons  who  were  able  for 
justing  and  tourney  to  come  to  Edinburgh  to  him,  and  there  to 
exercise  themselves  for  his  pleasure,  some  to  run  with  the  spear, 
some  to  fight  with  the  battle-axe,  some  with  the  two-handed 
sword,  and  some  with  the  bow,  and  other  exercises.  By  this 
means  the  King  brought  the  realm  to  great  manhood  and  honour  : 
that  the  fame  of  his  justing  and  journey  spread  through  all 
Europe,  which  caused  many  errant  knights  to  come  out  of  other 
parts  to  Scotland  to  seek  justing,  because  they  heard  of  the  king- 
lie  fame  of  the  Prince  of  Scotland.  But  few  or  none  of  them 
passed  away  unmatched,  and  ofttimes  over-thrown." 

The  town  to  which,  tinder  this  young  and  gallant  Prince, 
the  stream  of  chivalry  flowed,  was  yet  more  picturesque 
than  the  still  and  always  "  romantic  town  "  of  which  every 
Scotsman  is  proud.  The  Nor'  Loch  reflected  the  steep 
rocks  of  the  castle  and  the  high  crown  of  walls  and  tur- 
rets that  surmounted  them,  with  nothing  but  fields  and 
greenery,  here  and  there  diversified  by  a  village  and  forti- 
fied mansion  between  it  and  the  sea.  The  walls,  which, 
followed  the  irregularities  of  the  rocky  ridge,  as  far  as  the 
beginning  of  the  Canongate,  were  closed  across  the  High 
Street  by  the  picturesque  port  and  gateway  of  the  Nether 


1C4  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

Bow,  the  boundary  in  that  direction  of  the  town,  shutting 
in  all  its  busy  life,  its  markets,  its  crowding  citizens,  its 
shops  and  churches.  On  the  south  at  the  foot  of  the  hill, 
the  burghers'  suburb,  where  the  merchants,  lawyers,  and 
even  some  of  the  nobles  had  their  houses  and  gardens,  lay 
outside  the  walls  in  the  sunshine,  protected  only  by  the 
soft  summits  of  the  Braid  and  Pentland  hills  :  what  is 
now  the  Cowgate,  not  a  savory  quarter,  being  then  the 
South  Side,  the  flowery  and  sheltered  faubourg  in  which 
all  who  could  afford  the  freedom  of  a  country  residence 
while  still  close  to  the  town,  expanded  into  larger  life,  as 
the  wealthy  tradesfolk  of  all  ages,  and  persons  bound  to 
a  center  of  occupation  and  duty,  always  love  to  do.  To- 
wards the  east,  and  gradually  becoming  as  important  and 
busy  as  the  High  Street  itself,  though  outside  the  series 
of  towers  which  guarded  the  city  gate,  lay  the  long  line  of 
the  Court  suburb,  the  lofty  and  noble  Canongate  descend- 
ing towards  the  abbey  and  palace,  where  all  that  was 
splendid  in  Scotland  congregated  around  the  gay  and  gal- 
lant King.  Outside  the  Netherbow  Port,  striking  out  in 
opposite  directions,  was  the  road  which  led  to  the  seaport 
of  Leith  and  that  which  took  its  name  from  the  great 
Kirk  of  Field,  St.  Mary's  "Wynd,  a  pleasant  walk  along 
the  outside  of  the  fortifications  to  the  great  monastery  on 
its  plateau,  with  the  Pleasance,  a  name  suggestive  of  all 
freshness  and  greenery  and  rural  pleasure,  at  its  feet. 
Inside  the  town,  between  the  castle  gates  and  those  of  the 
city,  were  the  crowded  habitations  of  a  medieval  town, 
the  only  place  where  business  could  be  carried  on  in  safety, 
or  rich  wares  exhibited,  or  money  passed  from  hand  to 
hand.  The  Lawnmarket  or  Linen  Market  would  be  the 
chief  center  of  sale  and  merchandise,  and  there,  no  doubt, 
the  booths  before  the  lower  stories,  with  all  their  merchan- 
dise displayed,  and  the  salesman  seated  at  the  head  of 
the  few  deep  steps  which  led  into  the  cavernous  depths 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  165 

within,  would  be  full  of  fine  dresses  and  jewelry,  and  the 
gold  and  silver  which,  some  one  complains,  was  worn  away 
by  the  fine  workmanship,  which  was  then  more  prized 
than  solid  weight.  The  cloth  of  gold  and  silver,  the  fine 
satins  and  velvets,  the  embroidery,  more  exquisite  than 
anything  we  have  time  or  patience  for  now — embroidery 
of  gold  thread"  which  we  hear  of,  an  uncomfortable  sort 
of  luxury,  even  upon  the  linen  of  great  personages — 
would  there  be  put  forth  and  inspected  by  gallants  in  all 
their  fine  array,  or  by  the  ladies  in  their  veils,  half  or 
wholly  muffled  from  public  inspection.  Even  the  cheaper 
booths  that  adorned  the  West  Bow  or  smaller  wynds, 
where  the  country  women  bought  their  kirtles  of  red  or 
green  when  they  brought  their  produce  to  the  market, 
would  show  more  gay  colors  under  their  shade  in  a  season 
than  we  with  our  sober  taste  in  years  ;  and  the  town  ladies, 
in  their  hoods  and  silk  gowns,  which  were  permitted  even 
in  more  primitive  times  to  the  possessors  of  so  much  a 
year,  must  have  been  of  themselves  a  fair  sight  in  all  their 
ornaments,  less  veiled  and  muffled  from  profane  view  than 
more  high-born  dames  and  demoiselles.  No  doubt  it  would 
be  a  favorite  walk  with  all  to  pass  the  port  and  see  what 
was  doing  among  the  great  people  down  yonder  at  Holy- 
rood,  or  watch  a  gay  hand  of  French  knights  arriving 
from  Leith  with  their  pennons  displayed,  full  of  some  chal- 
lenge lately  given  by  the  knights  of  Scotland,  or  eager  to 
maintain  on  their  own  account  the  beauty  of  their  ladies 
and  the  strength  of  their  spears  against  all  comers.  Edin- 
burgh can  never  have  been  so  amusing,  never  so  gay  and 
hright,  as  in  these  fine  times  ;  though,  no  doubt,  there 
was  always  the  risk  of  a  rush  together  of  two  parties  of 
gallants,  a  melee  after  the  old  mode  of  Clear  the  Cause- 
way, a  hurried  shutting  of  shops  and  pulling  forth  of  hal- 
berds. For  the  younger  population,  at  least,  no  doubt 
these  risks  were  almost  the  best  part  of  the  play. 


10,6  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

Thus  Edinburgh  breasted  its  ridge  of  rock — a  fair  sight 


OLD   HOUSES  AT   HEAD  OF  WEST   BOW 


across  all  the  green  country  ;  its  sentinel  mountain  crouch- 
ing eastward  between  the  metropolis  and  the  sea,  its  sub- 


JAMES  IV :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  167 

urbs  growing  and  expanding  ;  this  full  of  the  fine  people 
of  the  Court,  that  of  the  quiet  wealth  and  enjoyment  which 
made  no  extravagant  demonstration.  It  had  never  been 
so  prosperous,  never  so  much  the  center  of  all  that  was 
splendid  in  the  kingdom,  as  in  the  reign  of  the  fourth 
James — the  knight  of  romance,  the  gayest  and  brightest 
representative  of  the  House  of  Stewart,  though  unable  to 
defend  himself  from  the  tragic  fate  which  awaited  every 
sovereign  of  his  name. 

Among  the  finest  sights  seen  in  Edinburgh  must  have 
been -those  which  occurred  very  early  in  his  reign,  when 
the  great  Admiral,  Sir  Andrew  Wood,  he  who  had  met  so 
proudly  the  inquisition  of  the  lords,  came  from  sea  with  his 
prisoners  and  his  spoils.  Wood  had  not  pleased  the  reign- 
ing party  by  his  rough  fidelity  to  the  dead  King,  but  they 
could  not  induce  the  other  sea  captains,  by  any  promise 
of  reward  or  advancement,  to  attack  and  punish,  as  was 
their  desire,  the  greatest  sailor  in  Scotland.  And  when 
an  English  expedition  began  to  vex  the  Scottish  coasts, 
there  was  no  one  but  Wood  to  encounter  and  defeat  them, 
which  he  did  on  two  different  occasions,  bringing  the  cap- 
tains of  the  rover  vessels — probably  only  half  authorized 
by  the  astute  King  Henry  VII,  who  had  evidently  no  desire 
to  attack  Scotland,  but  who  had  to  permit  a  raid  from 
time  to  time  as  the  most  popular  thing  to  do — as  prisoners 
to  the  courteous  King,  who  though  he  "  thanked  Sir 
Andrew  Wood  greatly  and  rewarded  him  richlie  for  his 
labours  and  great  proof  of  his  manhood,"  yet  "  propined 
(gave  presents  to)  the  English  captain  richlie  and  all  his 
men  and  sent  them  all  safelie  home,  their  ships  and  all 
their  furnishing,  because  they  had  shown  themselves  so 
stout  and  hardie  warriours."  "  So  he  sent  them  all  back 
to  the  King  of  England,"  says  the  chronicler,  with  full 
enjoyment  of  James's  magnanimous  brag  and  of  thus  hav- 
ing the  better  of  "  the  auld  enemy  "  both  in  prowess  and  in 


168  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

courtesy,  "  to  let  him  understand  he  had  as  manlie  men 
in  Scotland  as  he  had  in  England  ;  therefore  desired  him  to 
send  no  more  of  his  captains  in  time  coming/'  England 
was  obliged  to  accept,  it  appeared,  this  bravado  of  the 
Scots,  having  no  excuse  for  repeating  the  experiment,  but 
was  "  discontented  "  and  little  pleased  to  be  overcome 
both  in  courtesy  and  in  arms. 

A  more  serious  matter  than  this  encounter  at  sea,  which 
was  really  more  a  trial  of  strength  than  anything  else, 
was  the  purely  chivalric  enterprise  of  James  in  taking  up 
the  cause  of  Perkin  "Warbeck,  the  supposed  Duke  of  York 
who  imposed  upon  all  Europe  for  a  time,  and  on  nobody 
so  much  as  the  King  of  Scotland.  This  adventurer,  who 
was  given  out  as  the  younger  son  of  Edward  IV,  escaped 
by  the  relenting  of  the  murderers  when  his  elder  brother 
was  killed  in  the  Tower,  was  by  unanimous  consent  of  all 
history  a  youth  of  person  and  manners  quite  equal  to  his 
pretensions,  playing  his  part  of  royal  prince  with  a  grace 
and  sincerity  which  nobody  could  resist.  The  grave 
Pinkerton,  so  sarcastically  superior  to  all  fables,  writing 
at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  had  evidently  not 
even  then  made  up  his  mind  how  to  accept  this  remark- 
able personage,  but  speaks  of  him  as  "  this  unfortunate 
prince  or  pretender,"  and  of  James  as  "  sensible  of  the 
truth  of  his  report  or  misled  by  appearance,'*  with  an 
evident  leaning  to  the  side  of  the  hero  who  played  so  bold 
a  game.  The  young  adventurer  came  to  James  with  the 
most  illustrious  of  guarantees.  He  brought  letters  from 
Charles  VIII  of  France,  and  from  the  Emperor  Maximil- 
ian, and  was  followed  by  a  train  of  gallant  Frenchmen 
and  by  everything  that  was  priricelike,  gracious,  and 
splendid.  So  completely  was  he  received  and  believed  at 
the  Scottish  Court  that  when  there  arose  a  mutual  love, 
as  the  story  goes,  between  him  and  the  Lady  Catherine 
Gordon,  daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Huntly,  one  of  the  most 


JAMES  IV :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  169 

powerful  peers  in  Scotland,  and  at  the  same  time  of  royal 
blood,  a  cousin  of  the  King,  the  marriage  seems  to  have 
been  accepted  as  a  most  fit  and  even  splendid  alliance. 
No  greater  pledge  of  belief  could  have  been  given  than 
this.  The  King  of  Scots  threw  himself  into  the  effort  of 
establishing  the  supposed  prince's  claims  as  if  they  had 
his  own.  Curious  negotations  were  entered  into  as  to 
what  the  pretender  should  do  if,  by  the  help  of  Scotland, 
he  was  placed  upon  the  English  throne.  He  was  to  cede 
Berwick,  that  always-coveted  morsel  which  had  to  change 
its  allegiance  from  generation  to  generation  as  the  balance 
between  the  nations  rose  and  fell — and  pay  a  certain  sum 
towards  defraying  the  expenses  of  the  expedition,  a  bar- 
gain to  which  Perkin,  playing  his  part  much  better  than 
any  king  of  the  theater  ever  did  before,  demurred,  insist- 
ing upon  easier  terms — as  he  afterwards  remonstrated 
when  James  harried  the  Borders,  declaring  that  he  would 
rather  resign  all  hopes  of  the  crown  than  secure  it  at  the 
expense  of  the  blood  and  goods  of  his  people.  A  pre- 
tended prince  who  thus  spoke  might  well  be  credited  as 
far  as  faith  could  go.  The  story  of  this  strange  enterprise 
is  chiefly  told  in  the  letter  to  Henry  VII  of  England  of 
Sir  John  Ramsay,  the  same  who  had  been  saved  by  James 
III  when  the  rest  of  his  favorites  were  killed,  and  who 
had  more  or  less  thriven  since,  though  in  evil  ways,  occu- 
pying a  position  at  the  Court  of  James  IV  whom  he 
hated,  and  acting  as  spy  on  his  actions,  which  were  all 
reported  to  the  English  Court.  Eamsay  gives  the  Eng- 
lish Government  full  information  of  all  that  his  sovereign 
is  about  to  do  on  behalf  of  the  fengit  (feigned)  boy,  and 
especially  of  the  invasion  of  England  which  he  is  about 
to  undertake  "  against  the  minds  of  near  the  whole  num- 
ber of  his  barons  and  people.  Notwithstanding,"  Ramsay 
says,  "this  simple  wilfulness  cannot  be  removed  out  of  the 
King's  mind  for  nae  persuasion  or  mean.  I  trust  verrilie," 


170  EOYAL  EDINBURGH. 

adds  the  traitor,  "  that,  God  will,  he  be  punished  by  your 
mean  for  the  cruel  consent  of  the  murder  of  his  father." 

Curiously  enough  Pitscottie,  the  most  graphic  and  cir- 
cumstantial of  historians,  says  nothing  whatever  of  this 
most  romantic  episode.  Why  he  should  have  left  it  out, 
for  it  is  impossible  that  it  could  have  been  unknown  to  him, 
we  are  unable  to  imagine  ;  but  so  it  is.  Buchanan  however 
enters  fully  into  the  tale.  The  wisest  of  James's  coun- 
selors, he  tells  us,  were  disposed  to  have  nothing  to  do 
with  this  spurious  young  prince  coming  out  of  the  un- 
known with  his  claim  to  be  the  rightful  King  of  England  ; 
but  many  more  were  in  his  favor,  specially  with  the  re- 
flection that  the  moment  of  England's  difficulties  was 
always  one  of  advantage  for  the  Scots.  An  army  was  ac- 
cordingly raised,  with  which  James  marched  into  England, 
carrying  Perkin  with  him  with  a  train  of  about  fourteen 
hundred  followers,  and  hopes  that  the  country  would  rise 
to  greet  and  acknowledge  their  lost  prince.  But  it  is 
evident  that  the  Northumbrians  looked  on  without  any 
response,  and  saw  in  the  expedition  but  one  of  the  many 
raids  which  they  were  always  so  ready  to  return  on  their 
side  when  occasion  offered.  The  pretender,  on  whose 
behalf  all  this  was  done,  shrank,  it  would  appear,  from 
the  devastation,  and  with  something  like  the  generous 
compunction  of  a  prince  protested  that  he  would  rather 
lose  the  crown  than  gain  it  so — a  protest  which  James 
must  have  thought  a  piece  of  affectation,  for  he  replied  with 
a  jeer  that  his  companion  was  too  solicitous  for  the  wel- 
fare of  a  country  which  would  neither  acknowledge  him 
as  prince  nor  receive  him  as  citizen.  Perkin  must  have 
begun  to  tire  the  patience  of  the  finest  gentleman  in 
Christendom  before  James  would  have  made  such  a  con- 
temptuous retort.  He  returned  with  the  King,  however, 
when  this  unsuccessful  expedition — the  only  use  of  which 
was  that  it  proved  to  James  the  fruitlessness  of  fighting 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT. 

on  behalf  of  a  pretender  who  had  no  hold  upon  the  people 
over  whom  he  claimed  to  reign — came  to  an  end.  It  was 
followed  by  some  slight  reprisals  on  the  part  of  the  English, 
and  after  an  interval  by  an  embassy  to  make  peace.  Henry 
VII  would  seem  to  have  been  at  all  times  most  unwilling 
to  have  Scotland  for  an  enemy,  notwithstanding  the  strange 
motive  suggested  to  him  by  the  traitor  Kamsay.  "  Sir," 
writes  this  false  Scot,  "  King  Edward  had  never  fully  the 
perfect  love  of  his  people  till  he  had  war  with  Scotland  ; 
and  he  made  sic  good  diligence  and  provision  therein  that 
to  this  hour  he  is  lovit ;  and  your  Grace  may  as  well  have 
as  gude  a  tyme  as  he  had."  But  the  cunning  old  potentate 
at  Westminster  was  not  moved  even  by  this  argument. 
Instead  of  following  the  instruction  of  the  virulent  spy 
whose  hatred  of  his  native  king  and  country  reaches  the 
height  of  passion,  he  sent  a  wise  emissary,  moderate  like 
himself,  the  Bishop  of  Durham,  to  inquire  into  the 
reasons  of  the  attack. 

And  Edinburgh  must  have  had  another  great  sensa- 
tional spectacle  in  the  arrival  not  only  of  the  English 
commissioners,  but  of  such  a  great  foreign  personage  as 
the  Spanish  envoy,  one  of  the  greatest  grandees  of  the 
most  splendid  of  continental  kingdoms,  who  had  come  to 
England  to  negotiate  the  marriage  of  Catherine  of  Arragon 
with  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  who  continued  his  journey 
to  Scotland  with  letters  of  amity  from  his  sovereigns  for 
James,  and  with  the  object  of  assisting  in  the  peacemak- 
ing between  the  two  Kings.  Henry  required  James  to 
give  up  the  pretender  into  his  hands — a  thing  which  of 
course  it  was  not  consistent  with  honor  to  do — but  it  was 
evident  that  the  King  of  Scots  had  already  in  his  own 
mind  given  up  the  adventurer's  cause.  And  after  the 
negotiations  had  been  concluded  and  peace  made  between 
England  and  Scotland,  Perkin  and  his  beautiful  young 
wife  and  his  train  of  followers  set  sail  from  Scotland  in  a 


172  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

little  flotilla  of  three  ships,  intending  it  is  said  to  go  to 
Ireland,  where  he  had  been  well  received  before  coming 
to  the  Court  of  James.  The  imagination  follows  with 
irrestrainable  pity  the  forlorn  voyage  of  this  youthful 
band  of  adventurers  :  the  young  husband  trained  to  all 
the  manners  and  ways  of  thinking  of  a  prince,  however 
little  reality  there  might  be  in  his  claims  ;  the  young 
wife,  mild  and  fair,  the  White  Kose  as  she  was  called,  with 
the  best  blood  of  Scotland  in  her  veins  ;  the  few  noble 
followers,  knights,  and  a  lady  or  two  who  shared  their 
fortunes,  setting  out  vaguely  to  sea,  not  knowing  where 
to  go,  with  the  world  before  them  where  to  choose.  When 
they  got  to  Ireland  Prince  Perkin  heard  of  an  insurrec- 
tion in  Cornwall,  and  hastened  to  put  himself  at  the  head 
of  it,  placing  his  wife  for  security  in  the  quaint  fortress, 
among  the  waters  of  St.  Michael's  Mount.  But  the  in- 
surrection came  to  nothing,  and  "  the  unfortunate  prince 
or  adventurer  "  was  taken  prisoner.  He  was  pardoned  it 
is  said,  but  making  a  wild  attempt  at  insurrection  again, 
was  this  time  tried  and  executed.  His  White  Eose,  most 
forlorn  of  ladies,  was  taken  by  King  Henry  from  her 
refuge  at  the  end  of  the  world,  placed  in  charge  of  the 
Queen,  and  never  left  the  English  Court  again.  There  is 
no  record  that  she  and  her  husband  were  ever  allowed  to 
meet.  So  ends  one  of  the  saddest  and  most  romantic  of 
historical  episodes. 

This  story  takes  up  a  large  part  of  the  early  reign  of 
James,  who  no  doubt  saw  his  error  at  the  last,  but  in  the 
beginning  threw  himself  into  Perkin's  fortunes  with 
characteristic  impetuosity,  and  thought  nothing  too  good, 
not  even  his  own  fair  kinswoman,  for  the  rescued  prince. 
It  was  an  error,  however,  that  James  shared  with  many 
high  and  mighty  potentates  who  gave  their  imprimatur  at 
first  to  the  adventurer's  cause.  But  even  for  the  most 
genuine  prince,  when  only  a  pretender,  the  greatest  sover- 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  173 

eigns  are  but  poor  supporters  in  the  long  run.  James  had 
a  hundred  things  to  do  to  make  him  forget  that  unfortu- 
nate adventure  of  Perkin.  It  was  in  the  year  1497  that 
this  incident  ended  so  far  as  the  Scottish  Court  was  con- 
cerned, and  James  returned  to  the  natural  course  of  his 
affairs,  not  without  occasional  tumults  on  the  Border, 
but  with  no  serious  fighting  anywhere  for  a  course  of 
pleasant  years.  The  old  traditional  strife  between  the 
King  and  the  nobles  no  longer  tore  the  kingdom  asunder. 
Perhaps  the  first  great  event  of  his  life,  the  waking  up  of 
his  boyish  conscience  to  find  himself  in  the  camp  of  a  fac- 
tion pitted  against  his  own  father,  influenced  him  through- 
out everything,  and  made  the  duty  of  conciliation  and 
union  seem  the  first  and  most  necessary  ;  perhaps  it  was 
but  the  natural  revulsion  from  those  methods  which  his 
father  had  adopted  to  his  hurt  and  downfall ;  or  perhaps 
James's  chivalrous  temper,  his  love  of  magnificence  and 
gaiety,  made  him  feel  doubly  the  advantage  of  courtiers 
who  should  be  great  nobles  and  his  peers,  not  dependants 
made  splendid  by  his  bounty.  At  all  events  the  King 
lived  as  no  Stewart  had  yet  lived,  surrounded  by  all  with- 
out exception  who  were  most  noble  in  the  land,  encourag- 
ing them  to  vie  with  him  in  splendor,  in  noble  exercises 
and  pastimes,  and  almost,  it  may  be  imagined — with  a 
change  of  method,  working  by  good  example  and  genial 
comradeship  what  his  predecessors  had  vainly  tried  to  do 
by  fire  and  sword — tempting  them  to  emulate  him  also  in 
preserving  internal  peace  and  a  certain  reign  of  justice 
throughout,  the  country.  There  was  no  lack  of  barons  in 
the  Court  of  James.  Angus  and  Home  and  Huntly,  who 
had  pursued  his  father  to  the  death  and  placed  himself 
upon  the  throne,  were  not  turned  into  subservient  cour- 
tiers by  his  gallantry  and  charm  :  but  neither  was  there 
any  one  of  these  proud  lords  in  the  ascendant,  or  any 
withdrawn  and  sullen  in  his  castle,  taking  no  share  in 


ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

what  was  going  on.  The  machinery  of  the  State  worked 
as  it  had  never  done  before.  There  were  few  Parliaments, 
and  not  very  much  law-making.  Enough  laws  had  been 
made  under  his  predecessors,  "  if  they  had  but  been  kept," 
to  form  an  ideal  nation  ;  the  thing  to  do  now  was  to  charm, 
to  persuade,  to  lead  both  populace  and  nobility  into 
respecting  them.  It  would  be  vain  to  imagine  that  this 
high  purpose  was  always  in  James's  mind,  or  that  his 
splendor  and  gaieties  were  part  of  a  plan  for  the  better 
regulation  of  the  kingdom.  Rut  that  he  was  not  without 
a  wise  policy  in  following  his  own  character  and  impulses, 
and  that  the  spontaneous  good-fellowship  and  sympathy 
which  his  frank,  genial,  and  easy  nature  called  forth 
everywhere  were  not  of  admirable  effect  in  the  welding 
together  of  the  nation,  it  would  be  unjust  to  say.  If  he  had 
not  the  sterner  nobility  of  purpose  which  made  the  first  of 
his  name  conceive  and  partially  carry  into  effect  the  ideal 
reign  of  justice  which  was  the  first  want  of  his  kingdom,  he 
had  yet  a  noble  ambition  for  Scotland  to  make  her  honored 
and  feared  and  famous,  and  the  success  with  which  he 
seems  to  have  carried  out  this  object  of  his  life  for  many 
years  was  great.  He  made  the  little  northern  kingdom 
known  for  a  center  of  chivalry,  courtesy,  courage,  and, 
what  was  more  wonderful,  magnificence,  as  it  had  never 
been  before.  He  penetrated  that  country  with  traditions 
and  associations  of  himself  in  the  character  always  at- 
tractive to  the  imagination,  of  that  prince  of  good  fel- 
lows, the  wandering  stranger,  who  came  in  unknown  and 
sought  the  hospitality  of  farmer  or  plowman,  and  made 
the  humble  board  ring  with  wit  and  jest,  and  who  there- 
after was  discovered  by  sudden  gift,  or  grace,  or  unexpected 
justice,  to  be  the  King  : — 

"He  took  a  bugle  from  his  side,  and  blew  both  loud  and  shrill, 
And  four  and  twenty  belted  knights  came  trooping  owre  the 
hill;" 


JAMES  IV :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  175 

"  Then  he  took  out  his  little  knife,  let  a'  his  duddies  fa', 
And  he  was  the  bra  west  gentleman  that  was  among  them  a'." 

The  goodman  of  Ballangeich,1  the  jovial  and  delight- 
ful Gaberlunzie,  the  hero  of  many  a  homely  ballad  and 
adventure,  some  perhaps  a  trifle  over  free,  yet  none  in- 
volving any  tragic  treachery  or  betrayal,  James  was  the 
playfellow  of  his  people,  the  Haroun  al  Kaschid  of  Scotch 
history.  "By  this  doing  the  King  heard  the  common 
brute  (bruit)  of  himself."  Thus  he  won  not  only  the  con- 
fidence of  the  nobles  but  the  genial  sympathy  and  kindness 
of  the  poor.  A  minstrel,  a  poet  too  in  his  way,  a  man 
curious  about  all  handicrafts,  famous  in  all  exercises, 
"ane  singular  good  chirurgian,  so  that  there  was  none 
of  that  profession  if  they  had  any  dangerous  case  in  hand 
but  would  have  craved  his  advice" — he  had  every  gift 
that  was  most  likely  to  commend  him  to  the  people,  who 
were  proud  of  a  king  so  unlike  other  kings,  the  friend  of 
all.  And  nothing  could  exceed  the  activity  of  the  young 
monarch,  always  occupied  for  the  glory  of  Scotland  what- 
ever he  was  doing.  It  was  he  who  built  the  great  ship, 
the  Michael,  which  was  the  greatest  wonder  ever  seen  in 
the  northern  seas  ;  a  ship  which  took  all  the  timber  in 
Fife  to  build  her  (the  windswept  Kingdom  of  Fife  has 
never  recovered  that  deprivation)  besides  a  great  deal  from 
Norway,  with  three  hundred  mariners  to  work  her,  and  car- 
rying "ane  thousand  men  of  warre  "  within  those  solid 
sides,  which,  all  wooden  as  they  were,  could  resist  cannon 
shot.  "  This  ship  lay  in  the  road,  and  the  King  took 
great  pleasure  every  day  to  come  down  and  see  her/'  and 

1  This  name  and  assumed  character  is  generally  supposed  to 
belong  to  James  V  :  but  all  the  accompanying  circumstances 
seem  to  point  so  much  more  to  what  is  recorded  of  James  IV., 
tha,t  I  venture  to  attribute  them  to  him.  If  it  is  an  error  there 
is  this,  at  least,  to  be  said  in  favor  of  it,  that  the  story  is  as  appli- 
cable to  one  as  to  the  other  monarch. 


176  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

would  dine  and  sup  in  her,  and  show  his  lords  all  her 
order  and  provisions.  No  doubt  there  were  many  curious 
parties  from  Edinburgh  who  followed  the  King  to  see 
that  new  wonder,  and  that  groups  would  gather  on  the 
ramparts  of  the  castle  to  point  out  on  the  shining  Firth 
the  great  and  lofty  vessel,  rising  like  another  castle  out 
of  the  depths.  James  had  also  the  other  splendid  taste, 
which  his  unfortunate  father  had  shared,  of  building,  and 
set  in  order  the  castle  at  Falkland  in  the  heart  of  the 
green  and  wealthy  Fife — where  there  was  great  hunting 
and  coursing,  and  perhaps  as  yet  not  much  high  farming 
in  those  days — and  continued  the  adornments  of  Stirling, 
already  so  richly  if  rudely  decorated  in  the  previous  reign. 
But  Edinburgh  was  the  centre  of  all  the  feasting  and 
splendor  which  distinguished  his  time.  The  lists  were  set 
before  the  castle  gates,  on  that  lofty  and  breezy  plateau 
where  all  the  winds  blow.  Sometimes  there  were  bands 
of  foreign  chivalry  breaking  lances  with  the  high  Scottish 
nobles  according  to  all  the  stately  laws  of  that  mimic 
war ;  sometimes  warriors  of  other  conditions,  fighting 
Borderers  or  Highlanders,  would  meet  for  an  encounter  of 
arms,  ending  in  deadly  earnest,  which  was  not  discouraged, 
as  we  are  told  with  grim  humor,  since  it  was  a  gain  to  the 
realm  to  be  disembarrassed  of  these  champions  at  any 
cost,  and  the  best  way  was  that  they  should  kill  each 
other  amicably  and  have  no  rancor  against  Justiciar  or 
King.  Among  the  foreign  guests  who  visited  James  was 
Bernard  Stuart  of  Aubigny,  Monsieur  Derbine,  as  Pits- 
cottie  calls  him,  the  representative  of  a  branch  of  the  royal 
race  which  had  settled  in  France,  whom  James  received, 
his  kinsman  being  an  old  man,  with  even  more  than  his 
usual  grace,  making  him  the  judge  in  all  feats  of  chivalry 
"  at  justing  and  tourney,  and  calling  him  father  of  warres, 
because  he  was  well  practised  in  the  same."  Another  of 
the  visitors,  Don  Pedro  d'Ayala,  the  Spanish  grandee  who 


CLOSE.— Page  176. 


Royal  Edinburgh. 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  177 

helped  to  conduct  the  quarrel  over  Perkin  Warbeok  to  a 
great  issue,  wrote  to  his  royal  master  a  description  of  King 
James,  which  is  highly  interesting,  and  full  of  uncon- 
scious prophecy.  The  Spaniard  describes  the  young  mon- 
arch at  twenty-five  as  one  of  the  most  accomplished  and 
gallant  of  cavaliers,  speaking  Latin  (very  well),  French, 
German,  Flemish,  Italian,  and  Spanish  ;  a  good  Christian 
and  Catholic,  hearing  two  masses  every  morning  ;  fond  of 
priests — a  somewhat  singular  quality  unless  such  jovial 
priests  and  boon-companions  as  D unbar,  the  poet-friar, 
were  the  subject  of  this  preference  ;  though  perhaps  the 
seriousness  which  mingled  with  his  jollity,  the  band  of  iron 
under  his  silken  vest,  led  him  to  seek  by  times  the  charm 
of  graver  company,  the  mild  and  learned  Gavin  Douglas 
and  other  scholars  in  the  monasteries,  where  thought  and 
learning  had  found  refuge.  The  following  details,  which 
are  highly  characteristic,  bring  him  before  us  with  an- 
gular felicity,  and,  as  afterwards  turned  out,  with  a  curi- 
ous foreseeing  of  those  points  in  him  which  brought  about 
his  tragical  end. 

"  Rarely  even  in  joking  a  word  escapes  him  which  is  not  the 
truth.  He  prides  himself  much  upon  it,  and  says  it  does  not 
seern  to  him  well  for  kings  to  swear  their  treaties  as  they  do  now. 
The  oath  of  a  king  should  be  his  royal  word  as  was  the  case  in 
bygone  ages.  He  is  courageous  even  more  than  a  king  should 
be.  I  have  seen  him  even  undertake  most  dangerous  things  in 
the  late  wars.  I  sometimes  clung  to  his  skirts  and  succeeded  in 
keeping  him  back.  On  such  occasions  he  does  not  take  the  least 
care  of  himself.  He  is  not  a  good  captain,  because  he  begins  to 
fight  before  he  has  given  his  orders.  He  said  to  me  that  his  sub- 
jects serve  him  with  their  persons  and  goods,  in  just  or  unjust 
quarrels,  exactly  as  he  likes :  and  that  therefore  he  does  not 
think  it  right  to  begin  any  warlike  undertaking  without  being 
himself  the  first  in  danger.  His  deeds  are  as  good  as  his  words. 
For  this  reason,  and  because  he  is  a  very  humane  prince,  he  is 
much  loved." 

The  perfect  reason  yet  profound  unreasonableness  of  this 
la 


178  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

quality  in  James,  so  fatally  proved  in  his  after  history,  is 
very  finely  discriminated  by  the  writer,  who  evidently  had 
come  under  the  spell  of  a  most  attractive  personality  in 
this  young  sovereign,  so  natural  and  manful,  so  generous 
and  true.  That  James  should  acknowledge  the  penalty  of 
the  fatal  power  he  had  to  draw  a  whole  nation  into  his 
quarrel,  just  or  unjust,  by  risking  himself  the  first,  is  so 
entirely  just  according  to  every  rule  of  personal  honor,  yet 
so  wildly  foolish  according  to  all  higher  policy  ;  exposing 
that  very  nation  to  evils  so  much  greater  than  the  worst 
battle.  Flodden  was  still  far  off  in  the  darkness  of  the 
unknown,  but  had  this  description  been  written  after  that 
catastrophe,  it  could  not  more  clearly  have  disclosed  the 
motives  and  magnanimity  but  tragic  unwisdom  of  this 
prince  of  romance. 

The  Spaniard  adds  much  praise  of  James's  temperance, 
a  virtue  indifferently  practised  by  his  subjects,  and  of 
his  morality,  which  is  still  more  remarkable.  The  amours 
and  intrigues  of  his  youth,  Don  Pedro  informs  his  king, 
this  young  hero  had  entirely  renounced,  "or  so  at  least  it 
is  believed,"  partly  "from  fear  of  God,  and  partly  from 
fear  of  scandal/'  which  latter  '•'  is  thought  very  much  of 
here  " — a  curious  touch,  which  would  seem  to  indicate  a 
magnificent  indifference  to  public  opinion,  not  shared  by 
the  little  northern  Court,  in  the  haughtier  circles  of 
Madrid.  The  picture  is  perhaps  a  little  nattered  ;  and  it 
is  hard  to  imagine  how  James  could  have  picked  up  so 
many  languages  in  the  course  of  what  some  writers  call  a 
neglected  education,  confined  to  Scotland  alone  ;  but 
perhaps  his  father's  fondness  for  clever  artificers  and 
musicians  may  have  made  him  familiar  in  his  childhood 
with  foreign  dependants,  more  amusing  to  a  quick-witted 
boy  than  the  familiar  varlets  who  had  no  tongue  but 
••'  braid  Scots."  "The  King  speaks  besides/'  says  Ayala, 
"  the  language  of  the  savages  who  live  in  some  parts  of 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT. 

Scotland  and  in  the  islands  "  ;  clearly  in  every  sense  of 
the  word  a  man  of  endless  accomplishments  and  personal 
note,  quite  beyond  the  ordinary  of  kings. 

At  no  time,  according  to  unanimous  testimony,  had 
Scotland  attained  so  high  a  position  of  national  wealth, 
comfort,  and  prosperity.  The  wild  Highlands  had  been 
more  or  less  subdued  by  the  forfeiture  of  the  traditionary 
Lord  of  the  Isles,  and  the  final  subjection  of  that  lawless 
region,  nominally  at  least,  to  the  King's  authority,  and 
with  every  precaution  for  the  extension  of  justice  and 
order  to  its  farthest  limits.  A  navy  had  suddenly  sprung 
into  being,  signalizing  itself  in  its  very  birth  by  brilliant 
achievements  and  consisting  of  vessels  few  indeed,  but  of 
exceptional  size  and  splendor,  as  great  for  their  time  as 
the  great  Italian  ironclads  are  for  this,  and  like  them 
springing  from  something  of  the  bravado  as  well  as  for  the 
real  uses  of  a  rapidly  growing  power.  And  there  had  been 
peace,  save  for  that  little  passage  of  arms  on  account  of 
Perkin  Warbeck,  throughout  all  the  reign  of  James — 
peace,  to  which  the  warlike  Scots  seem  to  have  accustomed 
themselves  very  pleasantly,  notwithstanding  that  on  the 
one  side  of  the  Border  as  on  the  other  there  was  nothing 
so  popular  as  war  between  the  neighbor  nations  ;  but  the 
exploits  of  Sir  Andrew  Wood  with  his  Yellow  Carvel,  and 
the  Great  Michael  lying  there  proudly  on  the  Firth,  ready 
to  sweep  the  seas,  afforded  compensation  for  the  postpone- 
ment of  other  struggles. 

It  was  in  these  circumstances  that  the  negotiations  for 
James's  marriage  with  the  little  Margaret,  Princess  Royal 
of  England,  and  in  every  way,  as  it  turned  out,  a  true 
Tudor,  though  then  but  an  undeveloped  child,  took 
place.  The  gallant  young  King,  then  seven  or  eight  and 
twenty,  in  the  plenitude  of  his  manhood,  was  not  anxious 
for  the  bride  of  ten  persistently  offered  to  him  by  her  royal 
father ;  and  the  negotiations  lagged,  and  seem  to  have 


180  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

gone  on  a  plusieurs  reprises  for  several  years.  But  at 
length  by  the  persistent  efforts  of  Henry  VII,  who  saw  all 
the  advantages  of  the  union,  and  no  doubt  also  of  council- 
lors on  the  Scots  side,  who  felt  that  the  continued  pros- 
perity of  the  country  was  best  secured  by  peace,  it  was 
brought  about  in  1504,  when  James  must  have  been  just 
over  thirty  and  Margaret  was  twelve — a  very  childish  bride, 
but  probably  precocious,  and  not  too  simple  or  ignorant, 
as  belonged  to  her  violent  Tudor  blood.  He  "  was  mar- 
ried with  her  solemnedlie  by  the  advice  of  the  nobilitie  of 
England  and  Scotland,  and  gatt  great  summes  of  money 
with  her  :  and  promise  of  peace  and  unity  made  and  or- 
dained to  stand  between  the  two  realms/'  says  Pitscottie. 
The  great  sums,  however,  seem  problematical,  as  the 
dower  of  Margaret  was  not  a  very  large  one,  and  the 
sacrifices  made  for  her  were  considerable — the  town  of  Ber- 
wick being  given  up  to  England  as  one  preliminary  step. 
The  event,  however,  was  one  of  incalculable  importance  to 
both  nations,  securing  as  it  did  the  eventual  consolidation 
in  one  of  the  realm  of  Great  Britain,  though  nobody  as 
yet  foresaw  that  great  consequence  that  might  follow. 
Along  with  the  marriage  treaty  was  made  one  of  perpetual 
peace  between  England  and  Scotland — a  treaty  indeed  not 
worth  the  paper  it  was  written  upon,  yet  probably  giving 
comfort  to  some  sanguine  spirits.  Had  the  prudent  old 
monarch  remained  on  the  throne  of  England  as  long  as 
James  ruled  in  Scotland  it  might  indeed  never  have  been 
broken  ;  but  Henry  was  already  old,  and  his  son  as  hot- 
headed as  the  cousin  and  traditionary  adversary  now 
turned  into  a  brother.  Margaret  was  conveyed  into 
Scotland  with  the  utmost  pomp,  and  Edinburgh  roused  it- 
self and  put  on  decorations  like  a  bride  to  receive  the  lit- 
tle maiden,  so  strangely  young  to  be  the  center  of  all  these 
rejoicings:  her  lofty  houses  covered  with  flutterings  of 
tapestries  and  banners  and  every  kind  of  gay  decoration, 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  181 

and  her  windows  filled  with  bright  faces,  coifs,  and  veils, 
and  embroideries  of  gold  that  shone  in  the  sun.  The 
dress  worn  by  James,  as  he  carried  his  young  bride  into 
Edinburgh  seated  on  horseback  behind  him,  is  fully  de- 
scribed for  the  benefit  of  after  ages.  He  wore  a  jacket  of 
cloth  of  gold  bordered  with  purple  velvet,  over  a  doublet 
of  purple  satin,  showing  at  the  neck  the  collar  of  a  shirt 
embroidered  with  pearls  and  gold,  with  scarlet  hose  to 
complete  the  resplendent  costume.  At  his  marriage  he 
wore  a  jacket  of  crimson  satin  over  a  doublet  of  cloth  of 
gold,  with  the  same  scarlet  hose,  and  a  gown  of  white 
damask  brocaded  with  gold  over  all.  No  doubt  the  ladies 
were  not  behind  in  this  contest  of  brave  apparel.  Gray 
Edinburgh,  accustomed  this  long  time  to  the  dull  tones  of 
modern  habiliments,  sparkled  and  shone  in  those  days  of 
finery  and  splendor.  The  streets  were  meant  for  such  fine 
shows  ;  its  stairheads  and  strong  deep  doorways  to  relieve 
the  glories  of  sweet  color,  plumes,  and  jewels.  When  the 
lists  were  set  on  the  summit  of  the  hill,  the  gates  thrown 
up,  the  garrison  in  their  steel  caps  and  breastplates  lining 
the  bars,  and  perhaps  the  King  himself  tilting  in  the 
melee,  while  all  the  ladies  were  throned  in  their  galleries 
like  banks  of  flowers,  what  a  magnificent  spectacle  !  The 
half-empty  streets  below  still  humming  with  groups  of 
gazers  not  able  to  squeeze  among  the  throngs  about  the 
bars,  but  waiting  the  return  of  the  splendid  procession  : 
and  more  and  more  banners  and  tapestries  and  guards  of 
honor  shining  through  the  wide  open  gates  of  the  port  all 
the  way  down  to  Holyrood.  There  was  nothing  but  holi- 
day-making and  pleasure  while  the  feasting  lasted  and  the 
bridal  board  was  yet  spread. 

While  this  heydey  of  life  lasted  and  all  was  bright 
around  and  about  the  chivalrous  James,  there  was  a  cer- 
tain suitor  of  his  Court,  a  merry  and  reckless  priest,  more 
daring  in  words  and  admixtures  of  the  sacred  and  the 


182  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

profane  than  any  mere  layman  would  venture  to  be,  whose 
familiar  and  often  repeated  addresses  to  the  King  afford 
us  many  glimpses  into  the  royal  surroundings  and  ways 
of  living,  as  also  many  pictures  of  the  noisy  and  cheerful 
medieval  town  which  was  the  center  of  pleasures,  of  wit 
and  gay  conversation,  and  all  that  was  delightful  in  Scot- 
land. Dunbar's  title  of  fame  is  not  so  light  as  this.  He 
was  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  followers  of  Chaucer,  a  mas- 
ter of  melody,  in  some  points  scarcely  inferior  to  the 
master  himself  whose  praise  he  celebrates  as 

"  Of  oure  Inglisch  all  the  light 
Surmounting  every  tong  terrestrial 

Alls  far  as  Mayis  morrow  dois  mydnyght." 

But  it  is  unnecessary  here  to  discuss  the  ' ( Thrissil  and 
the  Hois,"  the  fine  music  of  the  epithalamium  with  which 
he  celebrated  the  coming  of  Margaret  Tudor  into  Scotland, 
or  the  more  visionary  splendor  of  the  "  Golden  Targe." 
The  poet  himself  was  not  so  dignified  or  harmonious  as 
his  verse.  He  possessed  the  large  open-air  relish  of  life, 
the  broad  humor,  sometimes  verging  on  coarseness,  which 
from  the  time  of  James  I.  to  that  of  Burns  has  been  so 
singularly  characteristic  of  Scots  poetry  :  and  found  no 
scene  of  contemporary  life  too  humble  or  too  ludicrous  for 
his  genius — thus  his  more  familiar  poems  are  better  for 
our  purpose  than  his  loftier  productions,  and  show  us  the 
life  and  fashion  of  his  town  and  time  better  than  anything 
else  can  do.  This  is  one,  for  example,  in  which  he  up- 
braids "  the  merchantis  of  renown"  for  allowing  "  Edin- 
burgh their  nobil  town  "  to  remain  in  the  state  in  which 
he  describes  it : — 

"  May  nane  pass  through  your  principall  gates 
For  stink  of  haddocks  and  of  skates, 
For  cryin'  of  carlines  and  debates, 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  183 

For  fensorne  flytings  of  defame. 

Think  ye  not  shame 
Before  strangers  of  all  estates 
That  sic  dishonour  hurt  your  name  ? 

"Your  stinkand  schule  that  standis  dirk 
Halds  the  light  from  your  Parroche  Kirk, 
Your  forest-airs  iiialiis  your  houses  mirk 
Like  na  country  but  here  at  hame 

Think  ye  not  shame, 
Sa  little  policie  to  work 
In  hurt  and  sklander  of  your  name  ? 

"  At  your  hie  Croce,  where  gold  and  silk 
Should  be,  there  is  but  curds  and  milk, 
And  at  your  Tron  but  cokill  and  wilk, 
Pansches,  puddings,  of  Jok  and  Jame. 

Think  ye  not  shame 
Sin  as  the  world  sayis  that  ilk 
In  hurt  and  sklander  of  your  name  ?  " 

Thee  old  Edinburgh  rises  before  us,  beautiful  and  brave 
as  she  is  no  longer,  yet  thronged  about  the  Nether- 
bow  i*ort,  and  up  towards  the  Tron,  the  weighing-place 
and  center  of  city  life,  with  fishwives  and  their  stalls, 
with  rough  booths  for  the  sale  of  rougher  food,  and  with 
country  lasses  singing  curds  and  whey,  as  they  still  did 
when  Allan  Ramsay  nearly  four  hundred  years  after  suc- 
ceeded Dunbar  as  laureate  of  Edinburgh.  Notwithstand- 
ing, however,  these  defects  the  Scottish  capital  continued 
to  be  the  home  of  all  delights  to  the  poet-priest.  When 
his  King  was  absent  at  Stirling,  Dunbar  in  the  pity  of 
his  heart  sang  an  (exceedingly  profane)  litany  for  the 
exile  that  he  might  be  brought  back,  prefacing  it  by  the 
following  compassionate  strain  : — 

"We  that  are  here  in  Hevinis  glory 
To  you  that  are  in  Purgatory 
Commendis  us  on  our  hairtly  wyiss, 
I  mean  we  folk  in  Paradyis, 


184:  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

In  Edinburgh  with  all  merriness 
To  you  in  Strivilling  in  distress, 
Where  neither  pleasance  nor  delyt  is, 
For  pity  thus  ane  Apostle  wrytis. 
"  O  ye  Heremeitis  and  Hankersaidillis 
That  takis  your  penance  at  your  tabillis, 
And  eitis  nocht  meit  restorative 
Nor  drinkis  no  wyne  comfortative 
Bot  aill,  and  that  is  thyn  and  small, 
With  few  courses  into  your  hall ; 
But  (without)  company  of  lordis  or  knights 
Or  any  other  goodly  wightis, 
Solitar  walkand  your  allone 
Seeing  no  thing  but  stok  and  stone, 
Out  of  your  powerful  Purgatory 
To  bring  you  to  the  bliss  of  glory 
Of  Edinburgh  the  merry  toun, 
We  sail  begin  ane  cairfull  soun, 
And  Dirige  devout  and  meik 
The  Lord  of  bliss  doing  besiek 
You  to  delyvre  out  of  your  noy 
And  bring  you  soon  to  Edinburgh  joy, 
For  to  be  merry  among  us, 
And  so  the  Dirige  begynis  thus." 

Many  are  the  poet's  addresses   to  the  King  in  happier 
circumstances  when  James  is  at  home  and  in  full  enjoy- 
ment of  these  joys  of  Edinburgh.     His  prayers  for  a  bene- 
fice are  sometimes  grave  and  sometimes  comic,  but  never- 
failing.     He  describes  solicitors  (or  suitors)  at  Court,  all 
pushing  their  fortune.      "  Some  singis,  some  dancis,  some 
tells  storyis."     Some  try  to  make  friends  by  their  devo- 
tion, some   have    their    private   advocates  in   the  King's 
chamber,  some  flatter,  some  play  the  fool — 
"  My  simpleness  among  the  lave 
Wist  of  na  way  so  God  me  save, 
But  with  ane  humble  cheer  and  face 
Referris  me  to  the  Kyngis  grace, 
Methinks  his  gracious  countenance 
In  ryches  is  niy  sufficence." 


JAMES  IV:  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  Ig5 

Not  always  so  patient,  however,  he  jogs  James's  memory 
with  a  hundred  remedies.  "  God  gif  ye  war  Johne  Thom- 
sounis  man  !"  he  cries  with  rueful  glee  through  a  lively 
set  of  verses — 

' '  For  war  it  so  than  weill  were  me 
Bot  (without)  benefice  I  wald  not  be  ; 
My  hard  fortune  war  endit  then 

God  gif  ye  war  Johne  Thomsounis  man  ! " 

John  Thomson's  man  was,  according  to  the  popular 
saying,  a  man  who  did  as  his  wife  told  him  ;  and  Duubar 
was  strong  in  the  Queen's  favor.  Therefore  happy  had 
been  his  fate  had  James  been  of  this  character.  We  can- 
not, however,  follow  the  poet  through  all  his  pleadings  and 
witty  appeals  and  remonstrances,  until  at  last  in  despair- 
ing jest  he  commends  "  the  gray  horse  Auld  Dunbar"  to 
his  Majesty,  and  draws  or  seems  to  draw  at  last  a  consol- 
atory reply,  which  is  thus  recorded  at  the  end  of  the  poem 
under  the  title  of  "  Responsio  Regis." 

"  Efter  our  writtingis,  Treasurer 
Tak  in  this  gray  horse,  Auld  Dunbar, 
Which  in  my  aucht  with  service  trew 
In  lyart  changit  is  his  heu. 
Gar  house  him  now  against  this  Yuill 
And  busk  him  like  ane  Bischoppis  muill, 
For  with  my  hand  I  have  indorst 
To  pay  whatever  his  trappouris  cost." 

"Whether  this  reponse  was  really  from  James's  hand  or 
was  but  another  wile  of  the  eager  suitor  it  is  impossible  to 
tell :  but  he  did  eventually  have  a  pension  granted  him  of 
twenty  pounds  Scots  a  year,  until  such  time  as  a  benefice 
of  at  least  fifty  pounds  should  fall  to  him  ;  so  that  he  was 
kept  in  hope.  After  this  Dunbar  tunes  forth  a  song  of 
welcome  to  "his  ain  Lord  Thesaurair,"  in  which  terror  at 
this  functionary's  inopportune  absence — since  quarterday 
we  may  suppose — is  lost  in  gratulations  over  his  return. 
"  Welcome/'  he  cries — 


186  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

"  Welcome  my  benefice  and  my  rent 
And  all  the  lyflett  to  me  lent, 
Welcome  my  pension  most  preclair, 

Welcome  my  awin  Lord  Thesauair." 

Thus  the  reckless  and  jolly  priest  carols.  A  little  while 
after  he  has  received  his  money  he  sings  "  to  the  Lordes 
of  the  King's  Chacker,"  or  Exchequer — 

"  I  cannot  tell  you  how  it  is  spendit, 
But  weel  I  wat  that  it  is  ended. 

These  peculiarities,  however,  it  need  not  be  said  do  not 
belong  entirely  to  the  sixteenth  century.  The  reader  will 
find  a  great  deal  of  beautiful  poetry  among  the  works  of 
Dunbar.  These  lighter  verses  serve  our  purpose  in  showing 
once  more  how  perennial  has  been  this  vein  of  humorous 
criticism,  and  frank  fun  and  satire,  in  Scotland,  in  all 
ages,  and  in  throwing  also  a  broad  and  amusing  gleam  of 
light  upon  Edinburgh  in  the  early  fifteen  hundreds,  the 
gayest  and  most  splendid  moment  perhaps  of  her  long 
history. 

All  these  splendors,  however,  were  hard  to  keep  up, 
and  though  Edinburgh  and  Scotland  throve,  the  King's 
finances  after  a  while  seem  to  have  begun  to  fail,  and 
there  was  great  talk  of  a  pilgrimage  to  the  Holy  Land — it 
is  supposed  by  the  historians  as  a  measure  of  securing  that 
the  King  might  not  have  the  uncomfortable  alternative  of 
cutting  short  his  splendors  at  home.  This  purpose,  if  it 
was  gravely  entertained  at  all,  and  not  one  of  the  proposals 
of  change  with  which,  when  need  comes,  the  impecunious 
of  all  classes  and  ages  amuse  themselves  to  put  off  actual 
retrenchment,  never  came  to  anything.  And  very  soon 
there  arose  complications  of  various  natures  which  threw 
all  Christendom  into  an  uproar.  Henry  VIII.,  young, 
arrogant,  and  hot-headed,  succeeded  his  prudent  father 
in  England,  and  the  treaty  with  the  Scots  which  made 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  187 

or  seemed  to  make,  England  safe  on  the  borders,  gave 
the  English  greater  freedom  in  dealing  with  the  other 
hereditary  foe  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  Channel ;  while 
France  on  her  side  began  to  use  all  possible  efforts  to 
draw  from  the  English  alliance  the  faithful  Scots,  who 
had  always  been  the  means  of  a  possible  diversion,  always 
ready  to  carry  fire  and  flame  across  the  Border,  and  call 
back  the  warring  English  to  look  after  their  own  affairs. 
James,  with  perhaps  his  head  slightly  turned  by  his  own 
magnificence  and  the  prosperity  that  had  attended  him 
since  the  beginning  of  his  career,  seemed  to  have  imagined 
that  he  was  important  enough  to  play  the  part  of  peace- 
maker among  the  nations  of  Europe.  And  there  are 
many  embassies  recorded  of  a  bustling  bishop,  Andrew 
Forman,  who  seems  for  some  time  to  have  pervaded  Christ- 
endom, now  at  Borne,  now  at  Paris,  now  in  London, 
with  various  confused  negotiations.  It  was  a  learned  age, 
and  the  King  himself,  as  has  been  seen,  had  very  respect- 
able pretensions  in  this  way  ;  but  that  there  was  another 
side  to  the  picture,  and  that  notwithstanding  the  translator 
of  Virgil,  the  three  Universities  now  established  in  Scot- 
land, and  many  men  of  science  and  knowledge  both  in  the 
priesthood  and  out  of  it,  there  remained  a  strong  body  of 
ignorance  and  rudeness,  even  among  the  dignified  clergy 
of  the  time,  the  following  story,  which  Pitscottie  tells 
with  much  humor  of  Bishop  Forman,  James's  chosen 
diplomatist,  will  show. 

"This  bishop  made  ane  banquet  to  the  Pope  and  all  his  cardi- 
nals in  one  of  the  Pope's  own  palaces,  and  when  they  were  all 
set  according  to  their  custom,  that  he  who  ought  (owned)  the 
house  for  the  time  should  say  the  grace,  and  he  was  not  ane 
good  scholar,  nor  had  not  good  Latin,  but  begane  ruchlie  in  the 
Scottise  fashione,  saying  Benedicite.  believing  that  they  should 
have  said  Dominus,  but  they  answered  Deus  in  the  Italian  fash- 
ioun,  which  put  the  bishop  by  his  intendment  (beyond  his  under- 
standing), that  he  wist  not  well  how  to  proceed  ford  ward  but 


188  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

happened  in  good  Scottis  in  this  manner,  saying,  what  they 
understood  not,  '  The  devil  I  give  you  all  false  cardinals  to,  in  no- 
mine Patris,  Filii,  et  Spiritus  Sancti,  Amen.'  Then  all  the  bis- 
hop's men  leuch,  and  all  the  cardinals  themselves ;  and  the 
Pope  inquired  whereat  they  leuch,  and  the  bishop  showed  that 
he  was  not  ane  good  clerk,  and  that  the  cardinals  had  put  him 
by  his  text  and  intendment,  therefore  he  gave  them  all  to  the 
devil  in  good  Scottis,  whereat  the  Pope  himself  leuch  verrie 
earnestlie." 

This  did  not  prevent  his  Holiness,  probably  delighted 
with  such  a  racy  visitor,  from  making  Forman  Legate  of 
Scotland  ;  and  it  is  to  be  feared  that  the  meddling  diplo- 
matist with  his  want  of  education,  was  perhaps  a  better 
example  of  the  clergy  of  Scotland,  who  about  this  time 
began  to  be  the  mark  of  all  assailants  as  illiterate,  greedy, 
vicious,  and  rapacious,  than  such  a  gentle  soul  as  the  other 
poet  of  the  age,  afterwards  bishop  of  Dunkeld,  the  one 
mild  and  tranquil  possessor  of  the  great  Douglas  name. 

The  imbroglio  of  events  into  which  it  is  unnecessary  for 
us  to  enter  grew  more  and  more  complicated  year  by  year, 
until  at  length  it  came  to  be  a  struggle  between  France 
and  England  for  the  ally  who  could  be  of  most  assistance 
to  the  one  in  the  special  way  of  injuring  the  other,  and 
whom  it  was  of  the  first  advantage  to  both  to  secure. 
James  was  bound  by  the  treaty  of  permanent  peace  which 
he  had  made  at  his  marriage,  and  by  that  marriage  itself, 
and  no  doubt  the  strong  inclination  of  his  wife,  to  Eng- 
land ;  but  he  was  bound  to  France  by  a  traditionary  bond 
of  a  much  stronger  kind,  by  the  memory  of  long  friend- 
ship and  alliance,  and  the  persistent  policy  of  his  kingdom 
and  race.  The  question  was  modified  besides  by  other 
circumstances.  England  was,  as  she  had  but  too  often 
been,  but  never  before  in  James's  experience — harsh,  over- 
bearing, and  unresponsive  :  while  France,  as  was  also  her 
wont,  was  tender,  flattering,  and  pertinacious.  Henry 
refused  or  delayed  to  pay  Queen  Margaret  a  legacy  of. 


JAMES  IV :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT. 


189 


jewels  and  plate  left  to  her  by  her  father,  and  at  the  same 
time  protected  certain  Borderers   who  had  murdered  a 


WHITE  HORSE  CLOSE. 


Scottish  knight,  and  defended  them  against  justice  and 
James,  while  still  summoning  him  to  keep  his  word  and 
treatjr  in  respect  to  England  ;  while  on  the  other  hand  not 


190  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

only  the  King  but  the  Queen  of  France  appealed  to  James, 
he  as  to  an  ancient  ally,  she  as  to  her  sworn  knight,  to 
break  that  artificial  alliance  with  his  haughty  brother-in- 
law.  It  may  well  have  been  that  James  in  his  own  private 
soul  had  no  more  desire  for  such  a  tremendous  step  than 
the  nobles  who  struggled  to  the  last  against  it.  But  he 
had  Us  defauts  cle  ses  qualites  in  a  high  degree.  He  was 
nothing  if  not  a  knight  of  romance.  And  though,  as  the 
poet  has  said — 

"  His  own  Queen  Margaret,  who  in  Lithgow's  bower 
All  silent  sat,  and  wept  the  weary  hour," 

might  be  more  to  him  than  the  politic  Anne  of  France,  or 
any  fair  lady  in  his  route,  it  was  not  in  him,  a  paladin  of 
chivalry,  the  finest  of  fine  gentlemen,  the  knight-errant 
of  Christendom,  to  withstand  a  lady's  appeal.  Perhaps, 
besides,  he  was  weary  of  his  inaction,  the  only  prince  in 
Europe  who  was  not  inevitably  involved  in  the  fray  ;  weary 
of  holding  tourneys  and  building  ships  (some  of  which  had 
been  lately  taken  by  the  English,  turning  the  tables  upon 
him)  and  keeping  quiet,  indulging  in  the  inglorious  arts 
of  peace,  while  everybody  else  was  taking  the  field.  And 
Henry  was  arrogant  and  exasperating,  so  that  even  his  own 
sister  was  at  the  end  of  her  brief  Tudor  patience  ;  and 
Louis  was  flattering,  caressing,  eloquent.  When  that  last 
embassage  of  chivalry  came  with  the  ring  from  Anne's  own 
finger,  and  the  charge  to  ride  three  miles  on  English 
ground  for  her  honor,  it  was  the  climax  of  many  argu- 
ments. "  He  loves  war,"  the  Spaniard  had  said.  "  War 
is  profitable  to  him  and  to  the  country" — a  curious  and 
pregnant  saying.  James  would  seem  to  have  struggled  at 
least  a  little  against  all  the  impulses  which  were  pushing 
him  forward  to  his  doom.  He  promised  a  fleet  to  his  lady 
in  France  for  her  aid — a  fleet  foolishly  if  not  treacherously 
handled  by  Arran,  and  altogether  diverted  from  its  in- 


JAMES  IV :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  191 

tended  end  ;  finally,  that  having  failed,  James  flung  away 
all  precaution  and  yielded  to  the  tide  of  many  influences 
which  was  carrying  him  away. 

It  is  needless  to  tell  over  again  the  tale  that  everybody 
knows  :  how  both  heaven  and  hell  were  stirred  by  this 
ill-omened  undertaking  ;  how  an  aged  saint,  venerable 
and  stately,  suddenly  appeared  out  of  the  crowd  when  the 
King  was  at  his  prayers  in  the  Cathedral  of  Linlithgow, 
with  a  message  from  on  high  ;  and  how  when  James  had 
gone  back  to  Holyrood,  the  High  Street  of  Edinburgh 
resounded  in  the  dead  of  night  with  trumpet  note  and 
herald's  call  from  the  grim  Hades  of  medieval  imagina- 
tion, summoning  by  name  a  long  list  of  the  Scottish 
nobility,  of  whom  one  man  defied  the  portent  and  refused 
the  call  and  was  saved.  James  paid  no  heed  to  these 
warnings,  whether  supernatural  or  otherwise,  or  perhaps 
was  too  far  committed  to  give  any  heed  to  them,  carried 
away  by  the  wild  and  fatal  stream  which  had  caught  his 
feet,  with  something  of  that  extraordinary  impetus  of 
natural  tendency  long  restrained  which  acts  with  tenfold 
force  when  at  last  yielded  to.  It  is  unnecessary  either  to 
tell  the  story  of  all  the  foolish  fatal  lingerings  upon  the 
ill-omened  way  :  trifling  with  treacherous  ladies  for  whom 
he  cared  nothing,  cartels  from  Surrey  ;  the  abandonment 
of  a  strong  position,  lest  it  should  give  him  an  advantage, 
in  ever  greater  and  greater  folly  of  chivalry  :  the  refusal 
to  attack,  or  let  his  artillery  attack,  till  his  foes  were  all 
safely  over  the  bridge  :  all  exhibitions  of  high  honor  gone 
mad  with  the  intoxication  of  fate.  The  Spaniard's  letter 
comes  back  in  full  significance  as  we  watch  with  aching 
hearts  the  fatal  fray.  "  He  said  to  me  that  his  subjects 
serve  him  with  their  persons  and  goods,  in  just  or  unjust 
quarrels,  exactly  as  he  wishes,  and  that  therefore  he  does 
not  think  it  right  to  begin  any  warlike  undertaking  with- 
out being  himself  the  first  in  danger."  The  knight-errant 


192  ROYAL  EDINBURGH 

kept  his  consigne  of  honor  to  the  last.  He  betrayed  his 
people  to  the  most  utter  defeat  they  had  ever  encountered, 
but  he  was  himself  the  first  victim. 

Thus  died  the  only  Stewart  king  who  ever  seemed  to 
have  a  fair  prospect  of  escaping  the  fate  of  his  unfortunate 
race.  The  worm  in  his  conscience,  the  iron  belt  round 
his  body,  were  perhaps  only  symptoms  of  a  susceptible 
nature,  of  remorse  which  was  excessive  for  the  bewildered 
acquiescence  in  rebellion  of  an  unawakened  mind  and  an 
irresponsible  age.  And  his  life,  if  soiled  by  errors  which 
were  then  and  are  now  but  lightly  thought  of  in  a  prince, 
was  in  all  public  matters  noble,  honorable,  and  en- 
lightened, with  always  the  advantage  of  his  country  for 
its  aim,  even  in  the  midst  of  the  natural  gaieties  and  ex- 
travagances of  a  happy  temper  and  exuberant  energy. 
He  was  extravagant,  light-hearted,  a  lover  of  magnificence 
and  display,  all  of  which  things,  in  the  face  of  the  political 
economist,  sometimes  prove  themselves  excellent  for  a 
country  when  the  moment  comes  to  press  it  forward  into 
the  ranks  of  high  civilization  out  of  a  ruder  and  more 
primitive  development.  The  nobility  with  which  his 
father  struggled  to  the  death  he  held  in  a  leash  of  silk  or 
of  gold,  often  making  them  the  instruments  of  the  justice 
which  they  had  so  long  resisted.  There  was  peace  in  his 
time  such  as  had  never  before  been  in  Scotland,  and  redress 
of  grievances,  and  extinction  or  suppression  of  mortal 
feuds  and  intestine  struggles.  It  is  sometimes  given  to  a 
man  in  all  light-heartedness,  in  what  seems  the  spontane- 
ous way  of  his  own  impulses  and  pleasures,  to  do  what 
is  best  for  his  surroundings  and  his  time,  without  any 
apparent  strain  of  self-sacrifice  or  gravity  of  duty.  James 
Stewart,  the  fourth  of  his  name,  was  one  of  these  happy 
and  beautiful  natures  :  and  though  his  life  was  one  of 
almost  unbroken  prosperity  and  brightness,  yet  no  man 
can  say  that  his  stewardry  was  not  nobly  held,  and  to  the 


JAMES  IV  :  THE  KNIGHT-ERRANT.  193 

benefit  of  his  kingdom  and  people.  But  not  for  this  was 
the  doom  to  pass  by.  The  brightness  and  the  prosperity 
came  to  an  end  in  a  sudden  folly,  infatuation,  and  mad- 
ness, which  belonged  to  him  as  his  sunny  nature  did  and 
his  generosity  of  heart.  And  it  was  no  evil  chance,  but 
the  principle  of  his  life,  as  we  have  seen,  that  in  the 
calamity  into  which  he  drew  his  people  he  himself  should 
be  the  first  to  fall, 
13 


CHAPTER  V. 

JAMES  V  :   THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE. 

THE  course  of  Scottish  history  during  the  fifteenth  and 
beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  is  like  that  of  a  ship 
on  a  long  voyage,  full  of  vicissitudes  and  adventures. 
The  little  barque  amid  all  the  wild  commotions  of  the  sea, 
sometimes  driven  before  the  wind,  sometimes  stripped  of 
every  rag  of  canvas,  sometimes  beating  helpless  in  the 
trough  of  the  waves,  rights  herself  when  the  storm  is  over, 
repairs  her  masts,  restrings  her  cordage,  puts  forth  again 
sail  after  sail ;  and  with  a  sure  hand  at  the  helm  and  a 
moderate  breeze  in  her  canvas,  rises  white  and  strong 
against  the  blueness  of  sea  and  sky,  triumphant  over  all 
the  assaults  of  external  nature,  animated  by  human  will 
and  courage,  the  most  indomitable  of  all  created  things, 
and  affording  perhaps  the  best  example  of  the  survival 
and  unconquerable  power  of  these  masters  of  the  world  : 
till  again  there  arises  in  the  heavens  another  hurricane, 
furious,  ungovernable,  rousing  the  sea  to  madness,  strik- 
ing once  more  the  canvas  from  the  yards,  the  masts 
from  the  deck,  and  leaving  a  mere  hulk  at  the  mercy  of 
the  waves  which  rush  on  her  and  over  her  with  the  wild 
rage  of  beasts  of  prey.  Again  and  again  these  storms 
overtook  the  vessel  of  the  State  in  Scotland,  returning 
after  every  period  of  calm,  after  every  recovery  of  au- 
thority, as  wild,  as  tumultuous,  as  destructive  as  ever. 
Again  and  again  they  were  overcome,  the  power  of  resist- 
194 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.       195 

ance  restored,  the  equilibrium  regained,  only  to  fall  once 
more  into  the  raging  of  the  elements.  Each  successive 
king,  with  perhaps  one  exception,  had  seized  the  helm  as 
soon  as  his  hand  was  fit  for  the  strain,  or  even  before  it 
was  strong  enough  for  that  office,  and  had  gallantly 
brought  the  ship  round  and  reestablished  the  reign  of  a 
rational  will  and  a  certain  unity  of  command  over  all  the 
forces  of  the  storms  ;  but  when  he  fell,  left  the  helpless 
vessel  again  to  be  balloted  about  by  all  the  winds  of  Fate. 

This  was  the  case  almost  more  wildly  than  ever  when 
the  fourth  James  Stewart  died  at  Flodden.  The  heir,  the 
helpless  infant  prince,  was  not  two  years  old,  and  the 
flower  of  Scotland  had  been  slain  with  their  king.  The 
mature  warriors  and  statesmen,  the  wise  counselors,  the 
men  to  whom  the  country  might  have  looked  in  such  an 
interregnum,  were  all  gone.  There  remained  only  Church- 
men and  boys  in  the  devastated  country,  a  passionate 
English  queen  of  Tudor  blood,  and  no  settled  center  of 
government  or  reorganized  power.  Such  lords  as  were 
left  assembled  hastily  for  that  pathetic  oft-repeated  cere- 
mony, the  crowning  of  the  child,  taken  out  of  his  cradle 
to  have  the  fatal  circlet  put  upon  his  head — and  committed 
some  sort  of  regency,  such  as  it  was,  to  the  Queen.  And 
after  a  moment  in  which  the  country  was  paralyzed  with 
woe  and  every  house  full  of  mourning,  Scotland  plunged 
once  more  into  the  angry  waves,  among  the  lions  of  ever- 
recurring  anarchy  and  strife. 

Nothing  in  all  this  turbulent  and  terrible  history  has 
ever  been  so  tragic  as  Flodden.  The  nation  which  had 
lost  the  very  flower  and  strength  of  its  fighting  men,  its 
defenders  and  champions,  the  families  which  had  lost  their 
chiefs,  their  breadwinners — often  father  and  son  together, 
the  master  and  his  heir — were  struck  dumb  with  dismay 
and  anguish.  It  was  only  a  long  time  after,  when  despair 
had  sunk  into  a  softened  recollection,  that  it  was  possible 


196  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

even  to  breathe  forth  that  wail  over  the  Flowers  of  the 
Forest  which  all  Scotland  knows.  In  the  first  shock  of 
such  an  appalling  event  there  is  no  place  for  elegy.  There 
was  a  broken  cry  of  anguish  throughout  the  country, 
echoed  from  castle  and  cottage,  where  the  poor  women  clung 
together,  mistress  and  maid  equal  in  the  flood  of  common 
loss  :  and  there  was  at  the  same  time  a  strained  and  terrible 
rallying  of  all  the  poor  defenders  left,  the  old  men  and 
rusty  arms,  those  of  every  house  upon  the  Border  and 
every  town  upon  the  road  who  had  been  left  behind,  to 
meet  as  well  as  they  could  the  no  doubt  inevitable  march 
of  the  conquering  English  army,  which  everybody  felt 
sure  must  follow.  When  the  news  reached  Edinburgh 
the  magistrates  of  the  town  put  forth  a  proclamation  call- 
ing upon  the  inhabitants  to  prepare  for  the  defense  of 
the  capital,  and  forbidding  the  women — a  most  significant 
and  heartrending  order,  perhaps  unique  in  public  docu- 
ments— to  spread  dismay  through  the  streets  by  their 
crying  and  lamentations.  The  condition  into  which  the 
community  must  have  fallen  when  this  became  a  public 
danger  it  is  unnecessary  to  remark  upon.  The  wail  that 
sounded  through  all  the  country  must  have  risen  to  a  pas- 
sionate pitch  in  those  crowded  streets,  where  the  gates 
were  closed  and  all  the  defenses  set,  and  nothing  looked 
for  but  the  approach  of  the  victorious  English  with  swords 
still  dripping  with  Scottish  blood.  While  Edinburgh 
waited  breathless  for  this  possible  attack  an  extension  of 
the  existing  wall  was  begun  to  defend  the  southern  suburb, 
then  semi-rural,  containing  the  country-houses  of  the 
wealthy  burghers  and  lawyers,  the  great  convent  of  the 
Grayfriars,  that  of  St.  Mary  in  the  Field,  and  many  other 
monastic  houses.  This  additional  wall  greatly  increased 
the  breadth  of  the  enceinte,  which  now  included  a  con- 
siderable space  of  embowered  and  luxuriant  fields  on  the 
south  side.  It  was  called  the  Flodden  Wall,  and  kept  the 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      197 

memory  of  that  great  catastrophe  and  disaster  before  the 
minds  of  the  citizens  for  many  a  day. 

But  for  some  reason  or  other  the  English  army  which 
had  cut  Scotland  to  pieces  at  Flodden  went  no  farther. 
The  victory  was  no  doubt  a  very  costly  one,  and  perhaps 
Henry  VIII.  did  not  wish  to  drive  the  kingdom  of  which 
his  sister  would  now  be  Regent  to  extremity,  or  do  any- 
thing more  to  increase  the  desperate  hostility  of  a  country 
which  was  capable  of  giving  him  so  much  trouble.  At  all 
events  Surrey's  army  was  disbanded,  and  Scotland  was  left 
to  resume  her  struggle  within  herself  :  which  proved  the 
wildest  and  most  miserable  turmoil  and  anarchy  which 
her  troubled  records  had  yet  known. 

It  would  be  at  once  hopeless  and  unnecessary  to  enter 
into  any  sketch  of  the  endless  tumults  of  this  time  of  dis- 
tress. There  was  a  momentary  lull  in  which,  though  all 
the  old  personal  feuds  arose  again,  the  poor  little  King 
and  his  mother  were  left  undisturbed — she  in  possession 
of  a  regency  more  or  less  nominal,  and  in  a  state  of  health 
which  must  have  subdued  her  activities,  for  her  second 
son  was  not  born  till  several  months  after  her  husband's 
death.  But  tins  child  was  only  a  few  months  old  when 
Margaret,  young,  beautiful,  impassioned,  and  impetuous, 
compromised  her  position  by  a  sudden  marriage  with  the 
young  Earl  of  Angus — still  almost  a  boy,  and  with  nothing 
but  his  good  looks  to  recommend  him — an  event  which  at 
once  aroused  all  sleeping  enmities  and  precipitated  the 
usual  struggle  for  the  possession  of  the  infant  king.  I 
will  attempt  nothing  but  an  indication  of  one  or  two  scenes 
in  Edinburgh  which  took  place  during  this  struggle. 
Undeterred  by  the  evil  associations  which  surrounded  that 
name,  the  Scottish  lords  bethought  themselves  of  the 
French  Duke  of  Albany,  the  nearest  member  of  the  royal 
family,  the  son  of  that  duke  who  had  been  the  terror  of 
James  III.  who  had  conspired  with  England,  and  who 


198  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

finally  had  established  himself  in  France  and  died  there. 
His  son  was  a  French  subject,  the  son  of  a  French  mother, 
inheriting  through  her  great  estates  in  France  and  a  posi- 
tion which  was  little  inferior  in  dignity,  and  much  superior 
in  comfort,  to  that  of  the  harassed  monarch  of  a  most  tur- 
bulent kingdom.  But  he  was  James  Stewart,  the  nearest 
in  blood  to  the  crown,  and  his  name  seems,  temporarily 
at  least,  to  have  united  all  parties,  even  the  Queen,  though 
his  presence  was  fatal  to  her  claims  of  regency,  receiving 
him  with  courtesy  and  an  apparent  welcome.  He  had 
not  been  many  months,  however,  in  Scotland  before,  with 
the  sanction  of  his  council,  he  claimed  from  Margaret  the 
possession  of  the  King  and  his  brother — sending  four 
peers,  appointed  guardians,  to  the  castle,  to  receive  the 
children.  It  was  in  July,  1515,  two  years  after  Flodden, 
when  no  doubt  Edinburgh  had  regained  that  common 
cheerfulness  and  bustle  of  a  great  town  which  is  so  little 
inteiTupted  even  by  the  gravest  public  events.  The  dep- 
utation with  their  attendants  proceeded  from  the  Canon- 
gate,  where  they  had  been  sitting  in  assembly,  through 
the  Netherbow  Port  and  the  bustling  crowded  High  Street, 
to  the  castle,  no  doubt  gathering  with  them  on  their  way 
all  the  eager  crowd  which  could  free  itself  from  shop  or 
booth,  all  the  passers-by  in  the  streets,  a  continually-in- 
creasing throng.  Who  the  four  lords  were  we  are  not 
told.  The  whole  incident  is  recorded  in  a  letter  of  Lord 
Dacre  to  the  English  Council.  No  doubt  he  had  his  in- 
formation either  from  the  Queen  herself  or  from  members 
of  her  household.  Of  the  four  men  chosen  by  Albany  the 
Queen  was  at  liberty  to  reject  one,  and  no  doubt  they 
were  men  of  weight  and  gravity,  probably  not  unworthy 
of  the  trust. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  realize  the  flying  rumor  which 
would  go  like  the  wind  before  them  announcing  their 
errand,  and  how  windows  and  doorways  and  stairheads 


REID'S  CLOSE,  CANONGATE.— Page  108. 

Royal  Edinburgh. 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      199 

would  fill  with  eager  spectators,  and  all  the  moving  popula- 
tion would  press  up  the  hill  after  them  to  see  what  was  to 
be  seen.  The  high  houses  full  on  every  story  of  eager  heads 
thrust  forth,  relieving  with  unintentional  yet  lively  decora- 
tion the  many  windowed  fronts,  the  shopkeepers  crowd- 
ing at  their  doors  or  seizing  cap  and  halberd  to  follow, 
the  hum  and  excitement  of  the  roused  town,  surround  the 
envoys  like  the  background  of  a  picture.  Most  probably 
they  went  on  foot,  the  distance  being  so  short,  preceded 
by  a  glittering  herald  and  pursuivant — perhaps  David 
Lindsay,  who  can  tell  ?  still  too  young  to  wear  the  Lion  of 
Scotland  on  his  tabard,  but  keen  and  curious  to  see  this 
scene — he  who  had  seen  the  envoy  of  heaven  in  Linlith- 
go\v  Church  and  so  many  other  wonderful  things.  The 
crowd  surged  upwards,  keeping  a  respectful  space  in  the 
midst  for  the  lords  with  their  train,  and  filled  with  color 
and  movement  and  the  murmuring  of  numbers  that  great 
square  before  the  castle  gates  which  had  held  the  same 
excited  throng  so  often.  And  before  the  heralds  could 
summon  the  wardens  or  demand  entrance  in  the  name 
of  the  Regent,  the  great  gates  rolled  back,  and  all  who 
were  near  enough  to  see  gazed  in  amazement  at  such  a 
group  in  the  gateway  as  must  have  filled  many  eyes  with 
tears,  and  which  gave  at  once  the  most  astonishing  climax 
to  that  wonderful  picture.  There  Margaret  stood,  a  young 
woman  of  twenty-five,  not  a  noble  type  of  beauty,  perhaps, 
but  with  the  fresh  and  florid  Tudor  good  looks,  and  no 
doubt  the  imperious  Tudor  port  imposing  to  the  crowd, 
with  her  child  in  his  little  cloak  and  plumed  bonnet,  four 
years  old,  holding  her  hand.  Among  her  little  troop  of 
attendants,  the  ladies  of  her  subdued  Court,  and  the  cluster 
of  cavaliers  who  surrounded  her  young  husband,  there 
might  well  be  another  name  of  gentler  fame — the  then 
Provost  of  St.  Giles,  Gawin  Douglas,  poet  and  statesman, 
who  was  her  counselor  and  the  negotiator  of  her  many 


200  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

troubled  affairs.  But  in  this  emergency  it  was  the  Queen 
herself  who  bade  the  startled  lords  stand  and  deliver  their 
message.  They  stepped  forward  in  some  confusion,  one 
would  guess,  not  having  calculated  upon  this  sudden  en- 
counter with  such  an  unexpected  champion,  difficult  to 
silence — not  only  a  queen  with  all  the  prestige  both  real 
and  sentimental  which  surrounds  such  a  position,  but  also 
a  mother  whose  children  were  threatened.  When  they 
had  finished  their  explanation,  the  crowd  looking  on,  no 
doubt  impatient  of  the  pause  and  of  the  voices  that  could 
not  reach  their  ears,  Margaret  stepped  back  and  bade  her 
attendants  quickly  to  let  down  the  portcullis.  They  must 
have  been  stationed  ready  with  the  intention,  and  no 
doubt  the  lords  had  no  attendants  with  them  who  could 
have  hindered  any  such  step  or  forced  an  entrance.  While 
the  people  looked  on  wondering,  the  iron  bars  came  crash- 
ing down,  and  in  a  moment  the  Queen  and  her  child  were 
safe  though  visible  within.  Then  Margaret  addressed 
through  that  iron  trellis  the  astonished  deputation.  She 
told  them  that  she  was  the  guardian  of  the  castle,  enfeoffed 
in  it  by  her  royal  husband,  and  not  minded  to  yield  it  to 
any  man,  but  that  she  respected  the  Parliament  and 
country,  and  would  take  six  days  to  consider  the  demand 
made  to  her.  The  lords  left  outside  had  no  alternative 
but  to  turn  and  go  back,  not  we  may  be  sure  without  a 
chorus  of  commentaries  from  the  lively  crowd,  ever  quick 
to  note  the  discomfiture  of  its  masters,  and  delighted 
with  such  a  novel  sensation  :  though  the  grave  burghers 
would  shake  their  heads  at  the  boldness  of  the  English- 
woman who  had  so  confronted  the  Scots  lords  in  their  own 
city. 

The  Queen  transferred  herself  and  her  children  to  Stir- 
ling before  the  six  days  had  expired,  but,  as  might  be  sup- 
posed, her  little  triumph  was  short-lived.  Her  boyish 
husband  had  already  shown  signs  of  deserting  her,  and  prob- 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      201 

ably  enough  her  fancy  for  him  was  as  short-lived  as  those 
other  ephemeral  and  still  more  tragical  passions  which  her 
brother  had  scarcely  yet  begun  to  indulge.  The  excuse 
which  the  Eegent  and  his  counsel  put  forth  for  taking  the 
infant  King  from  his  mother  was  partly  her  second  mar- 
riage, and  partly  a  supposed  plan  for  carrying  off  the  two 
children  to  England,  which  did  actually  exist,  King  Henry 
being,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  their  nearest  of  kin  and  most 
powerful  possible  guardian,  though  one  who  would  have 
been  vehemently  rejected  by  all  Scotland  :  while  on  the 
other  hand  the  little  James  was  as  yet  the  most  likely  heir 
to  the  English  crown.  But  this  scheme  had  been  opposed 
both  by  the  Queen  herself — whose  statement  that  had  she 
been  a  woman  of  humble  condition  she  might  have  taken 
her  children  in  her  arms  and  gone  unknown  to  her  brother, 
but  that,  being  a  queen,  she  could  not  move  anywhere 
without  observation,  is  full  of  homely  and  natural  dignity 
— and  by  Gawin  Douglas,  who  repeats  the  same  objection. 
Margaret,  however,  did  not  long  continue  to  identify  her- 
self with  the  Douglases.  The  conduct  of  Angus  gave  her 
full  reason  for  offense,  if,  perhaps,  she  was  not  altogether 
guiltless  on  her  side  ;  and  they  were  in  a  state  of  absolute 
enstrangement  when  the  calling  of  a  Parliament  early  in 
the  year  1520  brought  Angus  to  Edinburgh,  where  with 
his  party  he  had  been  sometimes  master  and  sometimes 
proscribed  man  in  the  innumerable  variations  of  politics 
or  rather  of  personal  quarrels  and  intrigues.  Albany  had 
by  this  time  returned  to  France  without  however  resign- 
ing his  regency,  and  authority  was  more  or  less  repre- 
sented by  the  Earl  of  Arran,  who  was  at  the  head  of  the 
opposite  faction.  The  party  of  Arran  were  in  posses- 
sion of  Edinburgh  and  of  the  little  King,  now  eight  years 
old,  who  was  in  the  castle  under  charge  of  the  peers  who 
had  been  appointed  his  guardians,  when  Angus  reappeared. 
Queen  Margaret  amid  all  these  tumults,  finding  little  en- 


202  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

couragement  from  her  brother,  who  was  much  more  intent 
on  securing  a  party  in  Scotland  than  on  consulting  her 
wishes,  had  also  chosen  to  reside  near  her  boy  in  the  com- 
parative safety  of  that  stronghold.  Accordingly  when 
Earl  Angus  came  to  attend  the  Parliament  he  was  con- 
fronted by  his  adversaries  in  possession  of  the  town  and 
of  the  castle,  with  his  wife,  the  most  violent  adversary  of 
all,  in  the  fortress  shut  up  from  his  access  or  approach. 
He  was  accompanied,  Pitscottie  tells  us,  "  with  all  his  kin 
and  friends  to  the  number  of  five  hundred  spears,  weill 
accompanied  and  arrayed."  But  the  city  was  hostile,  and 
perhaps  something  in  the  somber  air  of  all  about  awak- 
ened the  suspicions  of  the  Douglases,  especially  as  the 
gates  were  hastily  shut  behind  them  and  more  than  usual 
precautions  taken.  Awakened  thus  to  a  sense  of  alarm, 
the  threatened  party  sent  scouts  out  into  the  streets  during 
the  night,  to  find  out  what  mischief  was  brewing.  While 
the  humbler  spies  pursued  their  inquiries  by  wynd  and 
changehouse,  Maister  Gawin  Douglas,  the  bishop,  went 
out  to  see  what  he  could  discover  of  the  real  state  of  affairs 
— if  it  was  true  that  the  westland  lords  had  held  a  secret 
meeting  and  resolved  that  Angus  should  not  leave  Edin- 
burgh now  that  he  had  put  himself  in  their  power — and 
"  if  he  could  find  any  gude  way  betwixt  the  two  parties." 
In  pursuance  of  this  anxious  quest  he  went  in  search  of 
Archbishop  James  Beatoun,  his  brother  of  St.  Andrews, 
whom  he  found  in  the  church  of  the  Black  Friars,  assist- 
ing, it  is  to  be  presumed,  at  some  evening  service. 

"The  said  Mr.  Gawin  desired  him  to  take  some  pains  to 
labour  betwixt  this  two  parties  which  was  at  ane  sharp  point, 
and  meaning  little  less  than  that  the  bishop  had  most  part  the 
wyte( blame)  thereof.  But  the  bishop  assured  him  again  with 
ane  oath,  chopping  on  his  breast,  saying,  '  By  my  conscience, 
my  lord,  I  know  not  the  matter.'  But  when  Mr.  Gawin  heard 
the  bishop's  purgation,  and  chopping  on  his  breast,  and  perceived 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.     203 

the  plates  of  his  jack  clattering,  he  thought  the  bishop  deceaved 
him,  so  Mr.  Gawin  said  to  him,  '  My  lord,  your  conscience  is 
not  good,  for  I  hear  it  clattering.'  " 

After  all  these  advertisements — the  bishop's  secret  coat 
of  mail,  the  angry  discussion  between  two  Hamiltons  in 
the  very  presence  of  Arran  the  head  of  the  house,  when 
he  was  himself  willing  to  grant  license  to  Angus  "  to 
speak  with  the  Queen's  Grace  and  thereafter  depart  out  of 
the  town" — and  all  the  lesser  evidences  of  danger  and 
conspiracy,  the  Earl  and  his  band  prepared  themselves  for 
the  worst.  "  This  young  lord  haisted  him  to  his  armour, 
and  caused  his  friends  and  servants  to  do  the  same,  and 
went  right  peartlie  to  the  gate,  and  stood  above  the  Nether 
Bow  in  arrayed  battle."  The  other  party,  when  they 
were  made  aware  that  the  Douglases  were  standing  on 
their  defense,  came  rushing  together  from  kirk  and 
market,  hastily  assembling  without  discipline  or  order,  to 
find  the  little  mail-clad  line  arranged  in  the  strongest  way 
against  the  background  of  the  houses,  where,  no  doubt, 
every  shopkeeper  had  rushed  to  his  bolts  and  bars,  and 
every  door  clanged  to  in  view  of  the  sudden  tumult.  Sir 
Walter  has  given  us  in  The  Allot  a  glimpse  more  pictur- 
esque and  graphic  than  any  we  can  attempt,  of  the  sudden 
scuffle  in  the  street  between  two  passing  groups,  the  armed 
attendants  more  dangerous  and  less  prudent  than  their 
masters,  whose  strife  as  to  which  was  to  hold  the  center 
of  the  street  was  enough  to  produce  at  once  an  encounter 
of  arms  ending  in  blood,  and  death  for  some  of  the  band. 
The  struggle  known  by  the  name  of  "  Clear  the  Cause- 
way "  was  more  important,  yet  of  a  similar  kind.  Angus 
and  his  five  hundred  spears — in  reality  a  much  greater 
number  since  each  spear  was  accompanied  by  certain  men- 
at-arms — had  much  the  advantage  of  the  other  party,  hur- 
riedly roused  from  their  occupations,  who  had  expected 
to  make  an  easy  end  of  the  Douglases  thus  betrayed  into  a 


204:  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

sort  of  ambush  in  a  hostile  city,  where  no  man  would  lift  a 
hand  to  help  them.  But  the  tables  were  completely  turned 
upon  the  Hamiltons  and  their  supporters,  when  rushing 
"  out  of  their  lodging  rudlie  to  the  gait  in  ane  furious 
rage/'  the  peaceable  driven  forward  by  the  taunts  of  the 
others,  they  found  Angus  and  his  spears  in  full  array  of 
battle.  "  When  the  Earl  of  Angus  saw  them  coming,  and 
perceaved  Sir  Patrick  Hamilton  foremost,  and  with  him 
the  Maister  of  Montgomerie,  and  saw  them  in  sic  ane 
furie,  he  knew  well  there  was  nothing  but  fighting,  and 
cryed  to  his  men  to  save  Sir  Patrick  Hamilton  if  they 
might  ;  but  he  came  so  far  before  the  rest  that  he  was 
slain  hastilie,  and  with  him  the  Maister  of  Montgomerie, 
with  sundry  other  gentlemen,  to  the  number  of  twelve 
score  and  twelve  persons."  The  end  of  the  fray,  which 
was  "  foughten  very  hardilie  on  both  sides  ane  long  space/' 
was  that  Arran's  men  were  driven  down  the  side  of  the 
hill  through  the  narrow  wynds  that  led  from  the  High 
Street  towards  the  wall,  and  thence  made  their  way  out 
through  some  postern,  or  perhaps  at  the  gate  near  the 
Well-house  Tower,  where  the  little  well  of  St.  Margaret 
now  bubbles  up  unconsidered,  and  so  across  the  Nor' 
Loch,  by  boat  or  ford.  Bishop  Beatoun,  he  whose  con- 
science clattered  beneath  his  robes,  fled  again  to  the 
Blackfriars  Church,  where  Mr.  Gawin  had  found  him  on 
the  previous  evening  prepared  for  mischief,  and  took  ref- 
uge there  behind  the  altar,  where  lie  was  pursued  and 
"his  rockit  rivin  aff  him,  and  had  been  slain,"  but  that 
Gawin  Douglas,  following  the  pursuers,  perhaps  with  a 
sarcastic  satisfaction  in  setting  forth  the  virtues  of  a 
peaceful  robe  over  the  warlike  covering  that  invited  as 
well  as  preserved  from  danger,  interposed,  saying,  "  It 
was  shame  to  put  hand  on  ane  consecreat  bishop."  The 
encounter  of  these  two  priests  by  evening  and  morning, 
the  supercilious  refusal  of  the  mail-clad  bishop  to  inter- 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      205 

fere,  and  pretense  of  ignorance — and,  as  one  may  imagine, 
the  watch  over  him  from  afar  of  his  brother  of  Dunkeld 
with  the  full  intention  of  peaceful  yet  effective  reprisals, 
throw  a  light  of  grim  humor  upon  the  warlike  scene. 
Maister  Gawin  had  no  mail-coat,  and  would  not  fight  ; 
but  he  must  have  kept  an  eye  upon  his  natural  foe  through 
the  fray,  and  it  would  be  strange  if  he  had  not  some  pleas- 
ure in  perceiving  the  rochet,  which  Beatoun  must  have 
donned  hastily  to  save  himself,  pulled  over  his  head  by 
rude  hands  in  scorn  of  the  priestly  pretense — and  some 
satisfaction  in  interposing  to  preserve  the  "  consecreat 
bishop,"  whose  behavior  was  so  little  saintly. 

"  Thereafter  the  Earl  of  Angus  passed  to  the  castle  and 
spoke  with  the  Queen  at  his  pleasure/'  says  Pitscottie.  It 
could  not  be  a  very  gracious  or  affectionate  interview. 
For  Margaret  and  her  husband  had  long  before  come  to  a 
complete  breach,  and  the  greatest  desire  in  her  mind  was 
to  divorce  the  young  man  whom  she  had  married  so  hast- 
ily, who  had  treated  her,  indeed,  with  little  consideration, 
and  whom  she  had  come  to  hate  with  a  bitterness  only 
possible  to  husbands  and  wives  ill  paired. 

After  this  the  young  King  passed  from  hand  to  hand, 
from  one  guardian  or  captor  to  another,  according  to  the 
custom  of  his  predecessors,  with  many  troubled  vicissi- 
tudes in  his  life  :  but  it  is  pleasant  to  believe  that  though 
the  story  leaves  a  painful  impression  as  of  a  distracted 
childhood,  continually  dragged  about  and  harassed  be- 
tween contending  forces,  yet  that  persistent  placidity  of 
nature  which  plants  flowers  upon  the  very  edge  of  the 
fiercest  precipices  interposed  to  secure  for  little  James  as 
for  other  children  the  nursery  calm,  the  infant  happiness 
which  is  the  right  of  childhood.  No  more  delightful 
picture  of  tender  infancy,  the  babbling  of  the  first  baby 
words,  the  sweet  exigence  and  endless  requirements  of  a 
child,  was  ever  made  than  that  which  Sir  David  Lindsay, 


206  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

the  future  Lyon  King,  whom  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  gaicle 
de  coBur  (that  he  should  ever  be  wrong  !)  introduces  in  full 
panoply  of  heraldic  splendor  before  Flodden,  but  who  was 
but  a  youth  in  the  new  James's  baby  days,  gives  in  his 
"Epistle  to  the  King's  Grace, "  dedicatory  to  one  of  his 
poems.  We  will  venture,  though  with  compunction,  once 
more  as  we  have  already  done,  to  modernize  the  spelling 
as  far  as  possible,  so  as  to  present  no  difficulty  to  the 
reader  in  the  understanding  of  these  delightful  verses. 

"  When  thou  was  young  I  bore  thee  in  mine  arme 

Full  tenderlie  till  thou  began  to  gang, 
And  in  thy  bed  oft  happit  thee  full  warme  ; 

With  lute  in  hand  then  sweetly  to  thee  sang. 
Sometime  in  dancing  wondrously  I  flang, 
And  sometime  playing  farces  on  the  floor, 
And  sometime  on  mine  office  taking  cure. 

"  And  sometime  like  a  fiend  transfigurate, 

And  sometime  like  the  grisly  ghost  of  Gye, 
In  divers  forms  oft  times  disfigurate, 

And  sometime  dissagyist  full  pleasantly. 
So  since  thy  birth  I  have  continually 
Been  occupied  and  aye  to  thy  pleasoure, 
And  sometime  Server,  Coppon,  and  Carvoure." 

In  another  poem  he  adds,  upon  the  same  subject,  re- 
turning to  the  pleasant  memory,  the  following  happy  de- 
scription : — 

"  How,  as  a  chapman  bears  his  pack, 
I  bore  thy  Grace  upon  my  back, 
And  sometime  stridling  on  my  neck, 
Dancing  with  many  a  bend  and  beck. 
The  first  syllables  that  thou  didst  moote 
Was  '  Pa,  Da  Lyn '  upon  the  lute. 
And  aye  when  thou  earnest  from  the  school 
Then  I  behoved  to  play  the  fool." 

"  Play,  Davy  Lindsay  :  "  the  touch  of  nature  brings  the 
water  to  one's  eyes.  Davy  Lindsay  had  yet  to  play  many 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      20? 

a  spring  before  King  James,  and  some  that  were  not  gay. 
But  the  gentle  stripling  with  the  infant  on  his  shoulder, 
the  pertinacity  of  tha  little  babbling  cry,  the  "  homely 
springs  "  played  offhand  that  it  was  pity  to  hear,  but  which 
the  lad  enjoyed  almost  as  much  in  laughing  at  their  dash- 
ing incorrectness  as  the  baby  who  knew  only  that  it  was 
a  pleasant  sound — how  bright  and  vivid  is  the  picture  ! 
Thiis  while  the  lords  and  his  mother  stormed  over  him, 
the  little  King,  perhaps  in  those  small  state-rooms  in  well- 
defended  Edinburgh,  perhaps  in  the  sunshine  at  Holyrood 
with  his  poet,  had  pleasant  days. 

James  was  already  a  growing  boy  when  the  last  and 
worst  of  the  tyrannies  which  oppressed  his  youth  began. 
When  the  disastrous  episode  of  Albany  was  well  over  the 
Douglases  again  made  one  last  desperate  struggle  for  the 
supreme  power.  Angus  it  would  seem  was  not  discouraged 
by  the  change  in  the  Queen  from  love  to  hate,  nor  even 
by  the  efforts  which  she  had  begun  to  make  to  divorce  and 
shake  him  off,  and  it  is  evident  that  he  must  have  secured 
the  liking  of  the  little  King,  to  whom  in  the  close  intimacy 
of  the  family  as  his  mother's  husband  he  must  have  been 
known  from  earliest  childhood.  The  Earl  was  handsome 
and  young,  one  of  the  finest  cavaliers  of  the  Court,  and 
probably  was  kind  to  the  infant  who  could  not  contradict 
or  cross  him,  and  whose  favor  it  was  so  expedient  to  secure. 
It  costs  a  young  man  little  to  make  himself  adored  by 
a  boy  to  whom  he  seems  the  incarnation  of  manly  strength 
and  splendor.  And  there  is  every  appearance  that  James 
accepted  Angns's  rule  at  first  with  pleasure,  no  doubt  look- 
ing up  to  him  as  a  guide  in  the  manly  exercises  which 
could  be  pursued  in  his  following  with  more  spirit  and  zeal 
than  in  the  Queen's  surroundings.  The  great  power  of 
the  Douglases,  which  it  took  so  much  bloodshed  to  break 
down,  and  which  James  II.  had  spent  all  his  life  in  con- 
tending with,  extinguished  in  one  branch  of  the  family. 


208  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

seemed  now  to  have  developed  in  another  with  increased 
and  extended  force.  Angus  was  as  great,  as  potent,  as 
universally  feared  as  the  Earls  of  Douglas  had  ever  been  ; 
and  almost  as  lawless,  filling  the  country  with  his  exactions 
and  those  of  his  dependants.  He  had  attained  this  triumph 
after  many  drawbacks  and  downfalls  and  against  the  strong- 
est opponents,  and  Scotland  was  overawed  by  the  terror  of 
that  well-known  name.  It  was  scarcely  to  be  supposed, 
however,  that  the  young  King,  precociously  aware  of  all 
the  dangers  of  his  position,  could  remain  subject  willingly 
as  he  grew  up  to  the  sway  of  a  vassal  of  the  Crown  how- 
ever great.  There  must  have  been  private  counselors  ever 
ready  to  whisper  that  Douglas  was  nothing  save  by  the 
King's  authority,  and  that  James's  favor  alone  could  keep 
him  in  his  usurped  place.  A  few  months  after  he  had 
attained  the  age  of  sixteen,  the  boy  over  whom  everybody 
had  intrigued  and  plotted  all  his  lifelong,  who  had  been 
torn  from  one  side  to  another  since  ever  he  could  remem- 
ber, and  whom  a  Douglas  had  but  recently  threatened,  at 
a  moment  of  alarm,  that  rather  than  render  him  up  they 
would  tear  him  in  two,  took  at  last  the  matter  into  his 
own  hands.  Whether  the  suggestion  was  his  own,  or  had 
in  some  way  been  breathed  into  his  mind,  there  is  no  evi- 
dence ;  but  it  is  clear  that  he  had  good  reason  to  be  very 
tired  of  his  subjection.  He  had  already  attempted,  we 
are  told,  several  means  of  getting  free  of  bondage,  but  had 
only  succeeded  in  causing  the  destruction  of  various  lords 
to  whom  he  had  appealed.  All  his  friends  had  been 
alienated  from  him.  His  mother  Avas  powerless  to  help, 
and  indeed  on  her  own  account  in  such  evil  case  that  she 
is  said  to  have  wandered  over  the  country  in  disguise, 
friendless  and  out  of  favor  with  all.  She  had  hastened 
into  a  third  foolish  marriage  as  soon  as  she  had  obtained 
her  divorce  from  Angus,  and  thus  lost  all  her  supporters 
and  champions.  His  uncle,  Henry  VIII,  was  more  closely 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      209 


bound  to  Angus,  who  was  strongly  in  the  interest  of  Eng- 
land as  against  France,  than  to  any  other  Scot,  and  the 
young  King  was  thus 
surrounded  by  influ- 
ences hostile  to  his 
freedom. 

There  are  moments, 
however,  when  the 
most  vigilant  watch 
relaxes,  and  it  so  hap- 
pened that  Angus  left 
his  young  prisoner  on 
one  occasion  at  the 
Castle  of  Falkland, 
the  hunting  seat  of 
the  Scots  kings,  to  all 
appearance  fully  oc- 
cupied with  hunting 
and  hawking  and 
thinking  of  nothing 
more  important,  in 
the  charge  of  Archi- 
bald Douglas,  the 
Earl's  uncle,  George 
his  brother,  and  a  cer- 
tain James  Douglas  of 
Parkhead,  who  was 
the  captain  of  the 
guard.  When  Angus 
had  been  gone  a  day 
or  two,  the  elder  of 
these  guardians  asked  DOORWAYi  SIR  A  AITCHESON,S  HOUSE 
leave  of  the  King  ac- 
cording to  the  formula,  to  go  to  Dundee  upon  personal  busi- 
ness of  his  own  ;  and  George  Douglas  rode  off  to  St.  An- 


210  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

drews  to  see  the  Bishop  on  a  question  of  taxes,  leaving  only 
the  captain  and  his  hundred  guardsmen  to  be  accounted  for. 
"Who  can  doubt  that  young  James  was  well  used  to  all 
devices  for  deceiving  his  jailers,  he  who  had  been  held 
by  so  many  ?  There  was  nothing  in  his  present  expedient 
which  could  have  offended  the  most  tender  conscience. 
He  desired  that  preparations  might  be  made  for  a  great 
hunting,  calling  upon  "  the  laird  of  Ferme,  forester  of 
the  park  of  Falkland,  and  chamberlain  of  Fife,"  to  warn 
everybody  about  and  call  all  the  surrounding  gentlemen 
"  that  had  speedie  dogs  "  to  hunt  with  him,  appointing 
the  meeting  next  morning  at  seven  o'clock,  "  for  he  was 
determined  to  slay  ane  deare  or  two  for  his  pleasure." 
Pitscottie  is  very  particular  in  his  description,  and  places 
the  economy  of  the  little  castle  before  us,  among  its  woods 
— with  its  simplicity,  its  precautions,  the  homeliness  of 
the  household.  The  King  desired  to  have  "  his  disjeuner  " 
at  four  in  the  morning,  and  bade  James  Douglas,  "  gang 
the  sooner  to  his  bed  that  night  that  he  might  rise  the 
sooner  in  the  morning,"  and  after  he  had  supped,  called 
for  a  drink  and  drank  to  Douglas,  say  ing  that  they  should 
see  good  hunting  on  the  morn,  and  warning  him  not  to  be 
late ;  from  which  it  may  be  guessed  that  Captain  James 
was  not  fond  of  early  hours.  The  captain  saw  as  he 
thought  the  King  go  to  bed,  and  having  set  the  watch, 
and  arranged  everything  for  the  night,  went  to  bed  him- 
self, as  the  boy  had  laughingly  bidden  him  to  do.  As 
soon  as  all  was  quiet,  eluding  the  watch  without  apparent 
difficulty,  the  King,  attended  only  by  "  Jockie  Hart,  a 
yeoman  of  the  stable,"  and  another  "  secret  servant/' 
escaped  in  the  stillness  of  the  night  into  the  freedom  of 
the  sleeping  country.  It  is  said  by  one  authority  to  have 
been  in  June  that  this  evasion  was  made,  but  in  June 
there  is  scarcely  any  night  at  all  in  Scotland,  and  the  brief 
darkness  could  scarcely  have  served  as  a  screen  for  the 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.     21 1 

fugitives  ;  probably  it  was  earlier  in  the  year,  when  the 
night  was  more  to  be  calculated  upon.  One  can  imagine 
the  breathless  excitement  and  delight  of  the  long  ride, 
with  the  fresh  breeze  in  his  face,  and  one  of  the  richest 
valleys  in  Scotland  coming  softly  into  sight  in  the  midst 
of  the  morning,  as  the  young  King  full  of  spirit,  ambition, 
and  all  the  rising  impulses  of  manhood,  left  behind  him 
the  gentle  shadow  of  the  Lomond  hills,  and  swept  round 
the  base  of  the  Ochils  towards  the  castle,  high-standing 
on  its  rock,  where  freedom  and  his  crown  and  all  the  privi- 
leges of  royal  life  and  independence  were  awaiting  him. 
He  reached  Stirling  in  the  breaking  of  the  day,  and  gallop- 
ing across  the  bridge,  caused  its  gates  to  be  closed  after 
him,  that  no  pursuer  might  cross  the  river  ;  and  was  re- 
ceived with  great  rejoicing  in  the  castle,  where  everything 
had  been  prepared  for  his  coming,  and  where  the  captain, 
having  let  down  the  portcullis  and  made  all  secure,  "laid 
the  King  in  his  bed,  because  he  had  ridden  all  that  night." 
Probably  there  was  no  moment  in  the  life  of  the  young 
monarch,  who  had  fallen  upon  such  troubled  times,  more 
sweet  than  this  when,  after  the  wild  excitement  of  the 
long  night's  riding,  he  closed  his  young  eyes,  at  an  hour 
so  unaccustomed,  in  the  clear  radiance  of  the  morning, 
feeling  his  life  now  free  before  him,  as  light  and  fair  and 
unfettered  as  the  rising  day.  But  Pitscottie  must  continue 
the  tale  in  his  own  admirable  way.  He  says  : — 

"  We  will  lat  him  sleep  in  his  bed,  and  return  to  George 
Douglas,  who  came  home  to  Falkland  at  eleven  hours  at  night, 
and  required  at  the  porters  what  the  King  was  doing,  who 
answered  that  he  was  in  his  own  chamber  sleeping,  who  was  to 
rise  tymous  to  the  hunting,  and  right  so  said  the  watchmen. 
George  hearing  this  went  to  his  bed,  till  on  the  morn  that  the 
sun  rose.  Then  came  Patrick  Carmichael,  baillie  of  Abernethie, 
and  knocked  at  George  Douglas's  chamber  door,  and  inquired  of 
him  what  the  King  was  doing.  George  answered  that  he  was 
not  waked  as  yet  in  his  own  chamber.  The  baillie  answered. 


212  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

'  Ye  are  deceaved  ;  he  is  along  the  bridge  of  Stirling  this  night.' 
Then  George  Douglas  gat  up  hastilie  and  went  to  the  porters 
and  watchmen  and  inquired  for  the  King,  who  still  answered 
that  he  was  sleeping  in  his  own  chamber.  Then  George  Douglas 
came  to  the  King's  chamber  door  and  found  it  locked,  and  dang 
it  up,  but  found  no  man  in  it.  Then  he  cryed,  '  Fye,  treason, 
the  King  is  gone  ! ' " 

The  confusion  and  dismay  of  the  household  were  great. 
Some  said  that  the  King  had  gone  to  Bambriefe  "  to  visit 
a  gentlewoman,"  which  explanation  was  received  with 
relief,  the  question  of  morality  being  of  small  consequence 
in  comparison.  George  Douglas  immediately  leaped  on 
his  horse  to  ascertain  if  this  were  true,  but  had  not  ridden 
more  than  two  miles  when  he  met  the  Earl  of  Rothes,  who 
told  him  the  King  was  not  there.  By  this  time  the  other 
Douglas  who  had  gone  to  Dundee  had  returned  also,  and 
a  hurried  council  was  held  what  to  do.  Angus  himself 
was  immediately  summoned  from  Tantallon  by  an  express, 
"  ane  haistie  post/'  and  instantly  answering,  set  out  with 
his  uncle  and  brother,  and  rode  to  Stirling  with  some  for- 
lorn hope  it  would  appear  of  recovering  their  empire  over 
the  King.  But  James  had  already  gathered  counselors 
round  him,  and  was  himself  too  strongly  determined  to 
maintain  his  liberty  to  allow  any  approach.  The  road  to 
Stirling  would  no  doubt  be  full  of  scouts,  to  give  warning 
of  what  the  discomfited  but  powerful  family  meant  to  do, 
and  as  soon  as  their  approach  was  known  a  herald  was 
sent  to  the  town  cross  to  proclaim  by  sound  of  trumpet  a 
royal  decree  that  neither  Angus  nor  his  companion  should 
approach  within  six  miles  of  where  the  King  was  under 
pain  of  death.  It  is  curious  to  mark  how  in  a  moment 
the  great  power  of  the  Douglases  and  their  high  courage 
collapsed  in  face  of  his  proclamation.  They  paused  on 
their  hasty  ride,  and  held  another  hasty  council,  and 
though  some  among  them  were  for  pressing  forward  and 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.     213 

seizing  once  more  the  malapert  boy  who  defied  them,  the 
Earl  himself  and  his  brother  decided  to  obey  the  procla- 
mation and  withdraw.  They  fell  back  upon  Linlithgow, 
where  they  paused  a  day  or  two  hoping  perhaps  for  better 
news.  But  by  this  time  the  other  nobles  were  crowding 
round  the  King.  Huntly,  Argyle,  Athole,  Glencairn, 
Monteith,  and  Kothes,  with  a  still  larger  company  of 
barons,  hastened  to  Stirling  to  protect  and  aid  with  their 
counsel  the  liberated  prince.  Archbishop  Beatoun,  the 
wily  Churchman,  who  had  done  all  he  could  to  overthrow 
Angus, — who  had  been  for  a  moment  so  worsted  in  the 
conflict  that  he  skulked  about  his  own  Fife  moors  in  the 
disguise  of  a  shepherc1,  but  who  had  lately  made  friends 
with  the  dominant  family  and  entertained  the  King  and 
his  guardians  together,  calling  them  "  to  his  pasche 
(Easter)  at  St.  Andrews," — and  who  had  no  doubt  known 
of  the  momentous  night  journey,  and  probably  detained 
George  Douglas  late  that  evening  to  make  it  more  sure, 
had  also  joined  the  King. 

With  this  powerful  escort  James  proceeded  to  Edin- 
burgh, where  for  some  time  the  lords  around  him  kept 
watch  night  and  day,  keeping  their  little  army  of  attend- 
ants under  arms  in  case  of  any  attack  on  the  part  of 
Angus.  One  night,  we  are  told,  James  himself  in  full 
armor  took  the  command  of  the  guard,  more  probably, 
however,  from  a  boyish  desire  to  feel  himself  at  the  head 
of  his  defenders  than  for  any  other  reason  ;  and  even  his 
bedchamber  was  shared,  after  an  unpleasant  fashion  of 
the  time,  by  the  bastard  of  Arran,  "  James  Hamilton, 
that  bloody  butcherer,"  as  Pitscottie  calls  him,  who  had 
precipitated  the  fray  of  "  Clear  the  Causeway  "  and  was 
Angus's  most  inveterate  enemy.  These  extraordinary 
precautions,  however,  seem  to  have  been  unnecessary. 
The  Douglases  would  appear  to  have  accepted  their  defeat 
as  complete,  and  to  have  been  entirely  cowed  by  it. 


214:  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

Another  proclamation  was  put  forth  on  the  arrival  of  the 
King  in  Edinburgh  commanding  all  true  subjects  to 
refrain  from  intercourse  of  any  kind  with  Angus,  his 
brother,  and  uncle,  not  to  receive  them  or  succor  them  or 
hold  any  communication  with  them  on  peril  of  being  con- 
sidered sharers  in  their  crime — in  short,  a  sort  of  inter- 
dict after  the  papal  fashion.  The  impromptu  council 
sat  for  two  days  in  the  upper  chamber  of  the  Tolbooth, 
which  was  the  recognized  Parliament  House,  chiefly,  it 
would  seem,  to  hear  the  King's  .indictment  against  the 
family  of  Douglas.  James  set  forth  all  his  grievances, 
his  subjection  to  the  will  of  Angus,  his  separation  from 
his  own  friends,  the  appearance,  he  had  been  made  to 
assume  of  enmity  to  his  real  champions,  and  vowed  at  the 
end,  says  Pitscottie,  in  the  fervor  of  his  indignation  and 
resentment,  that  Scotland  should  not  hold  them  both. 
He  would  receive  nothing  but  support  in  that  assembly 
where  all  had  suffered  from  the  supremacy  of  Angus,  and 
where  the  too  powerful  race  had  no  friends.  The  council 
appointed  anew  all  the  high  officers  of  State,  whose  posts 
had  been  appropriated  by  the  Douglases,  and  sent  an  envoy 
to  England  to  announce  that  the  government  of  Scotland 
was  henceforward  in  the  King's  own  hands.  It  was  also 
ordained  that  a  Parliament  should  be  called  in  the  month 
of  September,  to  confirm  in  a  more  decorous  and  regular 
way  the  decisions  of  the  present  hasty  assembly. 

When  Parliament  met  these  questions  were  accordingly 
discussed  over  again,  with  confirmation  of  what  had  been 
already  done.  It  was  decided  that  Angus  should  be  sum- 
moned before  them  to  answer  for  his  misdeeds,  under  the 
penalty  if  he  did  not  appear  of  being  "put  to  the  horn 
and  banished  during  the  King's  will."  Angus  was  not  so 
rash  as  to  trust  himself  within  the  power  of  his  enemies, 
as  his  kinsmen  of  the  house  of  Douglas  had  already  done 
on  two  fatal  occasions  :  and  as  neither  he  nor  his  retainers 


JAMES  V  :  THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.       215 

put  in  an  appearance,  they  were  accordingly  attainted,  their 
lands  forfeited  to  the  Crown,  their  name  put  under  the 
public  ban,  their  great  castle  of  Tautallon  seized,  and 
themselves  proclaimed  through  all  the  country  as  traitors 
whom  no  man  should  receive  or  succor. 

The  complete  downfall  which  overtook  this  great  house 
after  the  young  King's  abandonment  of  it  is  very  remark- 
able, and  shows  how  important  was  the  royal  position, 
notwithstanding  the  manner  in  which  it  had  been  exploite, 
and  the  mere  nominal  power  of  its  actual  possessor.  The 
house  of  Angus  crumbled  into  the  dust  as  soon  as  their 
young  prisoner  escaped  their  hands.  They  took  refuge 
in  England,  where  they  vainly  attempted  on  various  oc- 
casions to  negotiate  for  their  return,  but  with  no  success. 
The  name  continued  obnoxious  to  James  during  his  whole 
life.  Sir  Walter  has  done  his  best  to  rehabilitate  that 
name  in  the  noble  Douglas  of  The  Lady  of  the  Lake)  who 
has  been  identified  with  Archibald  of  Kilspindie,  "  the 
uncle  of  the  banished  Earl,"  the  story  of  whose  appearance 
at  the  games  at  Stirling  is  said  to  have  some  foundation 
of  reality.  But  the  historians  of  the  house,  who  alone 
mention  this,  state  the  facts  in  a  very  different  way. 

Thus  the  Angus  branch  of  the  Douglas  family  fell,  as 
the  Earls  of  Douglas  had  fallen,  and  for  a  generation  there 
was  little  heard  of  it  save  in  mutterings  of  treason  in 
moments  of  difficulty,  which  never  came  to  much — until 
in  the  following  reign  the  indomitable  race  rose  again  in 
another  branch  and  under  another  name,  and  furnished  in 
the  Regent  Morton  one  of  the  strongest  as  well  as  the 
most  questionable  figures  of  a  deeply  disturbed  time. 
Never  Avas  a  race  more  difficult  to  subdue. 

The  escape  of  James  from  Falkland  took  place  between 
Easter  and  June  in  the  year  1527.  In  1528,  the  Douglases 
being  clean  swept  out  of  the  country,  the  young  King  went 
on  a  professed  hunting  expedition  to  the  Borders,  where, 


216  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

besides  innumerable  deer,  its  ostensible  reason,  his  ride 
through  the  southern  district  carried  punishment  and 
death  to  many  a  Border  reiver  and  especially  to  the  famous 
John  or  Johnnie  Armstrong,  the  Laird  of  Kilnokie,  and 
chief  or  at  least  best-knovvn  representative  of  his  name. 
Whether  it  was  wise  policy  to  hang  the  reiver  who  was 
the  terror  of  the  Borders,  yet  "  never  molested  no  Scottis 
man,"  it  is  not  necessary  to  decide.  He  was  a  scourge  to 
the  English,  of  whom  it  was  said  that  there  was  none  from 
the  Scottish  Border  to  Newcastle  who  did  not  "  pay  ane 
tribute  to  be  free  of  his  cumber."  Johnnie  Armstrong 
had  the  folly  to  come  into  the  King's  presence  with  such 
a  train,  his  men  so  completely  armed  and  so  many  in 
number,  as  to  compete  with  royal  magnificence,  not  very 
great  in  Scotland  in  those  days.  "  What  wants  yon  knave 
that  a  king  should  have  ?"  said  the  young  James,  who 
had  certainly  had  enough  of  such  powerful  subjects  :  and 
he  would  not  listen  to  either  excuse  or  explanation  from 
the  Borderer,  whose  defiance  as  he  was  led  to  his  execu- 
tion, and  the  wail  of  his  wild  followers  after  him,  sounds 
still  in  the  stirring  strains  of  song  and  ballad.  No  doubt 
it  was  justice  that  James  did — but  justice  somewhat  stern 
and  out  of  time. 

The  young  Court  now  blazing  out  into  full  splendor, 
with  a  legitimate  head  and  every  prospect  of  prosperity, 
became  again  the  resort  of  foreign  chivalry  and  magnifi- 
cent envoys,  among  them  a  legate  from  the  Pope  to  assure 
the  allegiance  of  James  to  the  Holy  See,  which  his  uncle 
of  England  had  deserted.  Henry  at  the  same  time  did 
not  neglect  by  constant  messengers  and  vague  promises, 
now  of  the  hand  of  the  Princess  Mary,  now  of  an  Eng- 
lish dukedom,  to  secure  his  nephew  to  his  side.  After 
that  princess,  whom  her  father  tried  his  utmost  to  put  out 
of  the  succession  by  divorcing  her  mother,  James  was  the 
next  heir,  and  Henry  did  not  forget  that  possibility.  The 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      217 

hand  of  the  young  princess  had  already  been  several  times 
offered  to  the  Scots  King  without  any  certainty  either  in 
the  proposal  or  its  acceptance.  One  cannot  help  wonder- 
ing what  might  have  been  the  issue  had  that  unhappy 
Mary,  to  whom  history  has  given  so  grim  a  nickname, 
been  thus  wedded  in  early  youth  to  a  gracious  and  gallant 
Stewart.  In  all  history  there  occurs  by  times  a  gleam  like 
this  of  possible  deliverance  from  fate,  an  opening  by 
which  the  subjects  of  tragedy  might  have  secured  an  es- 
cape had  they  but  known.  One  wonders  had  she  thus 
escaped  the  wrongs  and  bitterness  of  her  early  career 
whether  Mary  would  have  got  free  from  those  traces  of 
blood  and  madness  which  have  left  so  dark  a  shadow  upon 
her  name  ;  or  whether,  in  the  conflict  that  was  to  follow, 
her  fierce  Tudor  passion  would  have  embittered  every 
strife.  It  is  wonderful  to  think  that  she  might  have  been 
the  mother  of  that  other  Mary  so  different  yet  still  more 
sadly  fated,  who  in  that  case  never  could  have  been  the 
Mary  Stewart  she  was.  We  are  led  to  something  like  a 
reductio  ad  absurdum  by  such  speculations,  very  vain  yet 
always  attractive  as  they  are.  James  was  eager  to  marry 
at  the  earliest  possible  moment,  and  all  would  have  wel- 
comed the  marriage  with  his  kinswoman. 

In  this  respect,  however,  as  in  almost  every  other,  Scot- 
land was  now  at  a  turning  point  of  the  utmost  importance 
in  her  career.  For  the  first  time  her  politics  had  begun 
to  be  troubled  by  the  possibility  of  an  alliance  with  Eng- 
land more  strong  and  lasting  than  the  brief  periods  of 
truce  which  had  hitherto  existed  between  two  nations 
whose  principle  and  tradition  were  those  of  enmity.  A 
perpetual  peace  had  indeed  been  sworn  and  signed  at  the 
time  of  the  marriage  of  Margaret  Tudor  with  James  IV., 
but  how  little  lasting  that  had  been  is  amply  demonstrated 
by  the  fact  that  no  such  crushing  defeat  had  ever  been 
inflicted  upon  Scotland  as  that  of  Fiodden,  in  which  the 


218  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

King  and  the  great  part  of  his  nobles  perished.  Perhaps 
it  was  the  germ  of  the  design  to  attract  the  lesser  country 
into  the  arms  of  the  greater  by  friendship  rather  than  to 
set  her  desperately  at  bay  against  all  peaceful  influences, 
which  had  prevented  the  successful  army  from  taking  ad- 
vantage of  the  victory  ;  but  certainly  through  all  the  dis- 
tracted period  of  James's  minority  efforts  had  been  made 
by  constant  envoys  to  acquire  a  share  in  the  councils  of 
the  country,  such  as  had  hitherto  been  considered  the 
right  of  France,  who  was  the  old  and  faithful  ally  as  Eng- 
land was  "  the  auld  enemy  "  of  the  Scots.  The  alliance 
with  France  had  been  taken  for  granted  on  all  sides.  That 
Scotland  should  harass  England  in  every  war  between  that 
country  and  her  continental  neighbor  was  a  foregone  con- 
clusion, and  it  was  something  still  more  sure,  a  proverb  on 
the  English  side,  that  when  France  was  to  be  assailed  the 
right  thing  was  to  begin  with  Scotland.  The  position  of 
Henry  as  brother  of  the  Scottish  Queen,  and  the  nearest 
relative  of  James,  who.  under  circumstances  not  at  all  un- 
likely to  occur,  might  be  his  heir,  gave  the  English  King 
now  a  natural  right  to  interfere  ;  and  it  is  conceivable  that 
had  this  right  been  exercised  more  wisely  it  might  have 
led  to  fortunate  issues.  But  unhappily  King  Henry  had 
associated  his  influence  with  that  of  Angus,  taking  the 
part  of  his  sister's  discarded  husband  with  great  deter- 
mination, and  apparently  without  any  sympathy  in  those 
changes  in  Margaret's  affections  which  so  much  resembled 
his  own.  Angus  was  to  Scotland  the  representative  of 
the  English  alliance,  and  as  everything  connected  with 
Angus  had  now  become  hateful  to  James,  it  followed  that 
his  uncle's  desire  to  obtain  an  influence  over  him,  which 
was  not  accompanied  by  any  substantial  marks  of  kind- 
ness towards  himself,  did  not  meet  with  much  success  ; 
though  it  might  have  been  otherwise  had  the  vaguely  pro- 
posed marriage  been  carried  out.  But  one  can  scarcely 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      219 

be  sorry  that  the  noble  and  graceful  James  should  have 
escaped  such  an  alliance. 

Other  and  still  more  serious  matters  were  now,  however, 
surging  upwards  in  both  England  and  Scotland,  which 
doubled  the  silent  struggle  between  the  old  ally  and  the 
new.  On  the  side  of  France  was  the  old  religion,  the 
Church  which  at  this  period  was  the  strongest  of  the 
Estates  of  Scotland,  richer  than  any  of  the  others,  and  pos- 
sessing almost  all  the  political  ability  of  the  time  :  on  the 
side  of  England,  a  new,  scarcely  recognized,  but  powerful 
influence,  which  was  soon  to  attain  almost  complete  mas- 
tery in  Scotland  and  shatter  that  Church  to  pieces.  In 
the  beginning  of  James's  reign  this  new  power  was  but 
beginning  to  swell  in  the  silent  bosom  of  the  country,  show- 
ing here  and  there  in  a  trial  for  heresy  and  in  the  start- 
ling fires  of  execution  which  cut  off  the  first  mart}rrs  for 
the  reformed  faith.  But  there  is  no  evidence  to  show  that 
James,  a  young  man  full  of  affairs  much  more  absorbing 
than  religious  controversy,  with  more  confidence,  politi- 
cally at  least,  in  the  Church  than  in  any  other  power  of 
his  realm,  had  ever  been  awakened  to  the  importance  of 
the  struggle.  The  smoke  of  those  fires  which  blew  over 
all  Scotland  in  potent  fumes  from  St.  Andrews,  on  the 
further  side  of  the  Firth  ;  and  from  Edinburgh,  where  on 
the  Castle  Hill  in  the  intervals  of  the  tiltings  and  tourneys, 
the  Vicar  of  Dollar  for  example,  of  whose  examination  we 
have  a  most  vivid  and  admirable  report,  full  of  picturesque 
simplicity,  not  without  humor  even  in  the  midst  of  the 
tragedy,  was  burnt — along  with  several  gentlemen  of  his 
county  :  does  not  seem  to  have  reached  the  young  King, 
absorbed  in  some  project  of  State,  or  busy  with  new  laws 
and  regulations,  or  inspecting  the  portraits  of  the  great 
ladies  among  whom  he  had  to  choose  his  bride.  There  is 
a  curious  story  communicated  in  a  letter  of  one  of  the  Eng- 
lish envoys  of  the  period  of  his  conversation  with  a  Scotch 


220  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

gentleman,  in  which  we  find  a  description  of  James  listen- 
ing to  a  play  represented  before  the  Court  at  the  feast  of 
the  Epiphany,  1540,  in  the  Castle  of  Linlithgow.  This 
play  is  believed  to  have  been  Sir  David  Lindsay's  Satire 
on  the  Three  Estates,  one  of  the  most  effective  attacks 
upon  the  corruptions  of  the  Church  which  had  ever  been 
made,  and  setting  forth  the  exactions  of  the  priests  from 
the  peasantry  and  the  poor  at  every  event  of  their  lives, 
as  well  as  the  wealth  and  wickedness  of  the  monastic  com- 
munities, of  which  Scotland  was  full,  and  which  had  long 
been  the  recognized  object  of  popular  satire  and  objurga- 
tion. The  performance  would  seem  to  have  had  as 
great  an  effect  upon  the  young  King  as  had  the  play  in 
Hamlet  upon  the  majesty  of  Denmark.  James  turned  to 
Beatoim  (the  Cardinal,  nephew  and  successor  of  Arch- 
bishop James)  the  Chancellor  in  indignant  remonstrance. 
Were  these  things  so  ?  and  if  they  Avere,  would  not  the 
bishops  and  other  powerful  ecclesiastics  join  to  repress 
them  ?  Let  them  do  so  at  once,  cried  the  sovereign  :  or 
if  not  he  should  send  half  a  dozen  of  the  proudest  of  them 
to  King  Henry  to  be  dealt  with  after  his  methods.  Even 
Churchmen  had  occasionally  to  brook  such  threats  from  an 
excited  prince.  Beatoun  answered  with  courtier-like  sub- 
mission that  a  word  from  the  King  was  enough,  upon 
which  James,  not  wont  to  confine  himself  to  words,  and 
strong  in  the  success  with  which  he  had  overcome  one  of 
his  Estates,  the  lords,  now  so  quiet  under  his  hand, 
replied  that  he  would  not  spare  many  words  for  such  an 
issue.  This  characteristic  scene  is  very  interesting.  But 
probably  when  the  memory  of  what  he  had  heard  faded 
from  the  busy  King,  and  the  tumult  of  public  events 
gained  possession  again  of  his  ear  and  mind,  he  forgot  the 
sudden  impression,  or  contented  himself  with  the  thought 
that  Beatoun  and  the  bishops  must  put  order  in  their  own 
affairs.  Pitscottie  tells  us  in  respect  to  a  projected  visit 


JAMES  V  :  THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.       221 

to  England,  vaguely  thought  of  and  planned  several  years 
before  this  time,  that  '"'the  wicked  bishops  of  Scotland 
would  not  thole"  a  meeting  between  James  and  Henry. 
"For  the  bishops  feared  that  if  the  King  had  met  with 
King  Henry  that  he  would  have  moved  him  to  casten 
down  the  abbeys,  and  to  have  altered  the  religion  as  the 
King  of  England  had  done  before.  Therefore  the  bishops 
bade  him  to  bide  at  home,  and  gave  him  three  thousand 
pounds  of  yearly  rent  out  of  their  benefices."  It  is  to  be 
feared  that  history  has  no  evidence  of  this  voluntary  mu- 
nificence, but  James  found  the  ecclesiastical  possessions 
in  Scotland  very  useful  for  the  purposes  of  taxation,  and  in 
this  respect  did  not  permit  Beatoun  to  have  his  own  way. 
When  the  young  King  was  in  his  twenty-fourth  year  he 
found  himself  able — many  previous  negotiations  on  the 
subject  having  come  to  nothing — to  pay  a  visit  to  the 
Continent  in  his  own  person  in  order  to  secure  a  wife.  It 
is  a  greater  testimony  to  the  personal  power  and  vigor  of 
James  than  any  mere  details  could  give  that,  within  eight 
years  of  the  time  when,  a  boy  of  sixteen,  he  had  escaped 
from  the  power  of  the  Douglas,  it  should  be  possible  for 
him  to  leave,  after  all  the  wild  anarchy  of  his  minority,  a 
pacificated  and  orderly  kingdom  behind  him,  in  the  care 
of  a  Council  of  Regency,  while  he  went  forth  upon  a  mis- 
sion so  important  to  himself.  He  had  altogether  extin- 
guished and  expelled  the  house  of  Douglas  ;  he  had  sub- 
dued and  repressed  other  turbulent  lords,  and  convinced 
them  that  his  authority  was  neither  to  be  neutralized  nor 
made  light  of  ;  he  had  settled  and  calmed  the  Border  by 
the  most  decisive  means  ;  and  he  was  now  free  to  show 
himself  in  the  society  of  kings,  and  win  his  princess,  and 
see  the  world.  He  had  been  already  the  object  of  many 
overtures  from  contemporary  Powers.  The  Emperor  and 
the  Pope  had  both  sent  him  envoys  and  conciliated  his 
friendship  ;  and  in  the  imperial  house  itself  as  well  as  in 


222  HOYAL  EDINBURGH. 

many  others  of  the  highest  rank  there  had  been  ladies 
proposed  to  share  his  crown.  The  one  more  immediately 
in  view  when  he  set  out  on  his  journey  was  a  daughter  of 
the  Duke  of  Venddme.  The  defeat  of  Charles  V  before 
Marseilles  took  place  almost  simultaneously  with  James's 
arrival,  and  the  Scotch  chroniclers  do  not  lose  the  oppor- 
tunity of  asserting  that  it  was  the  coming  of  the  King  of 
the  Scots  with  a  supposed  army  of  twenty  thousand  men 
to  the  succor  of  France  which  was  the  reason  of  the 
Emperor's  precipitate  withdrawal.  Pitscottie  narrates, 
with  more  evident  truthfulness,  how  the  Frenchmen  on  the 
Norman  coast  were  alarmed  by  the  ships,  fearing  it  to  be 
an  enemy  which  hove  in  sight,  "for  there  were  many 
strangers  in  his  companie,  so  that  he  appeared  ane  great 
army."  But  the  sight  of  the  red  lion  of  Scotland  changed 
their  alarms  into  joy,  and  they  welcomed  the  Scots  King 
and  party,  "  at  the  New  Haven  beside  Diep,"  witli  much 
rejoicing.  He  would  seem  to  have  pushed  across  France 
to  the  Court  of  Venddme  without  pausing  to  pay  his  re- 
spects to  the  King  at  Paris  ;  and  we  find  his  movements 
recorded  in  a  romantic  tale,  which  is  neither  contradicted 
nor  supported  by  other  authorities,  but  likely  enough  to  a 
romantic  young  prince  upon  a  love-quest.  According  to 
this  description  James  did  not  assume  his  proper  character 
but  appeared  only  as  one  among  the  many  knights,  who 
probably  represented  themselves,  to  make  his  feint  suc- 
cessful, as  merely  a  party  of  cavaliers  seeking  adventure 
and  the  exercises  of  chivalry.  He  intended  thus  to  see, 
while  himself  unknown,  "  the  gentlewoman  who  sould 
have  been  his  spouse,  thinking  to  spy  her  pulchritud  and 
behaviour  unkenned  by  her." 

"  Notwithstanding  this  fair  ladie  took  suspition  that  the  King 
of  Scotland  should  be  in  the  companie,  wherefore  she  passed  to 
her  coffer  and  took  out  his  picture,  which  she  had  gotten  out  of 
Scotland  by  ane  secret  moyane,  and  as  soon  as  she  looked  to  the 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      223 

picture  it  made  her  know  the  King  of  Scotland  incontinent 
where  he  stood  among  the  rest  of  hiscompanie,  and  past  peartlie 
to  him,  and  took  him  by  the  hand,  and  said, '  Sir,  ye  stand  over  far 
aside  ;  therefore,  if  it  please  your  Grace,  you  may  show  yourself 
to  my  father  or  me,  and  confer  and  pass  the  time  ane  while.'  " 

Perhaps  it  was  injudicious  of  the  fair  ladie  to  be  so 
"peart."  At  all  events,  after  much  feasting,  "nothing 
but  merriness  and  banquetting  and  groat  cheer  and  lovelie 
communing  betwixt  the  King's  grace  and  the  fair  ladies, 
with  great  musick  and  playing  on  instruments,  and  all 
other  kinds  of  pastime  for  the  fields/'  as  well  as  "  jousting 
and  running  of  great  horses,"  the  ungrateful  James 
"  thought  it  expedient  to  speak  nothing  of  marriage  at 
that  time,  till  he  had  spoken  with  the  King  of  France, 
considering,"  adds  the  chronicler,  who  perhaps  sees  an  ex- 
cuse to  be  necessary,  "he  was  within  his  realm  he  would 
show  him  his  mind  and  have  his  counsel  thereto  before  he 
concluded  the  matter."  Pitscottie  thus  saves  the  feelings 
of  the  lady  of  whom  other  historians  say  curtly  that  she 
did  not  please  the  King.  But  when  the  Scottish  band 
reached  the  Court,  though  it  was  then  in  mourning  for  the 
Dauphin,  recently  dead,  King  James  was  received  with 
open  arms.  The  King  of  France,  sick  and  sad  for  the  loss 
of  his  son,  was  in  the  country  at  a  hunting  seat,  and  when 
James  was  suddenly  introduced  at  the  door  of  his  chamber 
as  "  the  King  of  Scotland,  sire,  come  to  comfort  you,"  the 
arrival  evidently  made  the  best  possible  impression.  The 
sorrowful  father  declared,  as  he  embraced  the  young 
stranger,  that  it  was  as  if  another  son  had  been  given  him 
from  heaven  ;  and  after  a  little  interval  the  royal  party, 
increased  by  James's  Scottish  train,  moved  on  to  another 
palace.  We  may  be  allowed  to  imagine  that  the  Queen 
and  her  ladies  came  out  to  meet  them,  as  the  first  sight 
which  James  appears  to  have  had  of  his  future  bride  was 
while  she  was  "ryding  in  ane  chariot,  because  she  was 


224  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

sickly,  and  might  not  ryd  upon  hors."  Magdalen,  too, 
saw  him  as  he  rode  to  meet  the  fair  cavalcade  in  her  father's 
company,  who  looked  so  much  happier  and  brighter  from 
the  encounter  with  this  gallant  young  prince.  The  poor 
girl  was  already  stricken  for  death,  and  had  but  a  few 
months  to  live  ;  but  it  is  very  likely  that  her  malady  was 
that  fatal  but  deceitful  one  which  leaves  a  more  delicate 
beauty  to  its  victims,  and  gives  feverish  brightness  to  the 
eyes  and  color  to  the  cheek.  A  tender  creature,  full  of 
poetry  and  imagination,  and  most  likely  all  unconscious  of 
the  fate  that  hung  over  her,  she  loved  the  gallant  cavalier 
from  the  first  moment  of  seeing  him,  and  touched  the  heart 
of  James  by  that  fragile  beauty  and  by  the  affection  that 
shone  in  her  soft  eyes.  It  was  a  marriage  that  no  one  ap- 
proved, for  her  days  were  known  to  be  numbered.  But 
perhaps  some  faint  hope  that  happiness,  that  potent  phy- 
sician, might  arrest  disease,  as  it  has  been  known  to  do, 
prevailed  both  with  the  anxious  father  and  the  young  man 
beloved,  in  whom  tender  pity  and  gratitude  replaced  a 
warmer  sentiment.  At  all  events  the  marriage  took  place 
in  Paris,  in  the  noble  church  of  Notre  Dame,  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  year  1537.  The  King,  AVC  are  told,  sent  to 
Scotland  to  invite  a  number  of  other  noblemen  and  gentle- 
men to  attend  his  wedding,  which  was  performed  with  the 
greatest  pomp  and  splendor.  Not  until  May  did  the  young 
couple  set  out  for  their  home,  and  then  they  were  laden 
with  gifts,  two  ships  being  presented  to  them,  a  number 
of  splendid  horses  fully  caparisoned,  and  quantities  of 
valuable  tapestries,  cloth  of  silver  and  gold,  and  jewels  of 
every  description.  Perhaps  the  long  delay  was  intended 
to  make  the  journey  more  safe  for  the  poor  young  Queen. 
The  voyage  from  Dieppe  to  Leith  lasted  five  days,  and  the 
bridal  party  was  accompanied  by  an  escort  of  "  fiftie  ships 
of  Scottismen,  Frenchmen,  and  strangers."  "  When  the 
Queen  was  come  upon  Scottis  eard,  she  bowed  her  down 


JAMES  V :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      225 

to  the  same,  and  kissed  the  mould  thereof,  and  thanked 
God  that  her  husband  and  she  were  come  safe  through  the 
seas."  There  could  not  be  a  more  tender  or  attractive 
picture.  How  full  of  poetry  and  soft  passion  must  the 
gentle  creature  have  been  who  thus  took  possession  of  the 
land  beloved  for  her  young  husband's  sake!  The  Scottish 
eard  indeed  was  all  that  she  was  to  have  of  that  inheritance, 
for  in  little  more  than  a  month  the  gentle  Magdalen  was 
dead.  She  was  laid  in  the  chapel  of  the  palace  which  was 
to  have  been  her  home,  with  "aue  dolorous  lamentation; 
for  triumph  and  merriness  were  all  turned  into  dirges 
and  soul-masses,  which  were  very  lamentable  to  behold." 

This  sad  story  is  crowned  by  Pitscottie  with  a  brief  note 
of  the  death  of  the  Due  de  Vend6rne's  daughter,  "  who 
took  sick  displeasure  at  the  King  of  Scotland's  marriage 
that  she  deceased  immediately  thereafter ;  whereat  the 
King  of  Scotland  was  highly  displeased,  thinking  that  he 
was  the  occasion  of  that  gentlewoman's  death."  Other 
historians  say  that  this  tragical  conclusion  did  not  occur, 
but  that  the  Princess  of  Vendome  was  married  on  the  same 
day  as  James.  Pitscottie's  is  the  more  romantic  ending, 
and  rounds  the  pathetic  tale. 

After  such  a  mournful  and  ineffectual  attempt  at  married 
life  all  the  negotiations  had  to  be  begun  over  again,  and 
James  was  at  last  married,  to  the  general  satisfaction,  to 
Mary  of  Guise,  a  woman,  as-it  turned  out,  of  many  fine  and 
noble  qualities,  to  which  but  indifferent  justice  was  ever 
•'one.  It  was  before  this  event,  however,  and  immediately 
fk'r  the  death  of  the  Queen,  that  a  curious  and  tragical 
incident  happened,  which  furnished  another  strange  scene 
to  the  many  associations  of  Edinburgh.  This  was  the 
execution  of  Lady  Glamis  upon  the  Castle  Hill  for  witch- 
craft and  secret  attempts  upon  the  life  of  the  King  by 
means  of  magic  or  of  poison.  No  one  seems  to  know  what 
these  attempts  were.  Pitscottie  gives  this  extraordinary 


226  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

event  a  short  paragraph.  The  grave  Pinkerton  fills  a  page 
or  two  with  an  apology  or  defense  of  James  for  permitting 
such  an  act.  But  we  are  not  told  what  was  the  evidence, 
or  how  the  sovereign's  life  was  threatened.  The  supposed 
culprit  was  however — and  the  fact  is  significant — the  only 
member  of  the  family  of  Angus  left  in  Scotland,  the  sister 
of  the  Earl.  Once  more  the  Castle  Hill  was  covered  with 
an  awed  or  excited  crowd,  not  unaccustomed  to  that  sight, 
for  the  heretics  had  burnt  there  not  long  before,  but  at 
once  more  and  less  moved  than  usual,  for  the  victim  was  a 
woman  fair  and  dignified,  such  a  sufferer  as  always  calls 
forth  the  pity  of  the  spectators,  but  her  crime  witchcraft, 
a  thing  held  in  universal  horror,  and  with  which  there 
would  be  no  sympathizers.  Few,  if  any,  in  that  crowd 
would  be  so  advanced  in  sentiment  as  to  regard  the  cruel 
exhibition  with  the  horrified  contempt  of  modern  times. 
The  throng  that  lined  that  great  platform  would  have  no 
doubt  that  it  was  right  to  burn  a  witch  wherever  she  was 
found  ;  and  the  beauty  of  the  woman  and  the  grandeur  of 
her  race  would  give  a  pang  the  more  of  painful  satisfaction 
in  her  destruction.  But  it  is  strange  that  thus  a  last  blow 
should  have  been  aimed  at  that  family,  once  so  great  and 
strong,  which  James's  resentment  had  pursued  to  the  end. 
A  little  while  before,  Archibald  Douglas  of  Kilspindie  had 
thrown  himself  upon  James's  mercy — the  only  member  of 
the  Douglas  family  who  can  be  in  any  way  identified  with 
the  noble  Douglas  of  The  Lady  of  the  Lake. 

"  Tis  James  of  Douglas,  by  St.  Serle, 
The  uncle  of  the  banished  Earl." 

But  Archibald  of  Kilspindie  did  not  meet  the  same  for- 
giveness with  which  his  prototype  in  the  poem  was  received. 
He  was  sent  back  into  banishment  unforgiveri,  the  King's 
word  having  been  passed  to  forgive  no  one  condemned  by 
the  law.  Perhaps  the  same  stern  fidelity  to  a  stern  prom- 


JAMES  V  :  THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      227 

ise  was  the  reason  why  Lady  Glamis  was  allowed  to  go 
to  the  stake  unrescued.  But  we  speculate  iu  vain  on  sub- 
jects so  veiled  in  ignorance  and  uncertainty.  Perhaps  his 
counselors  acted  on  their  own  authority  in  respect  to  a 
crime  the  reprobation  and  horror  of  which  were  universal, 
and  did  not  disturb  the  King  in  the  first  shock  of  his 
mourning.  In  the  same  week  the  fair  and  fragile  Magdalen 
of  France  was  carried  to  her  burial,  and  Lady  G-lamis  was 
burned  at  the  other  extremity  of  Edinburgh.  Perhaps  it 
was  supposed  that  something  in  the  incantations  of  the 
one  had  a  fatal  influence  upon  the  young  existence  of  the 
other.  At  all  events  these  two  sensations  fell  to  the  popu- 
lace of  Edinburgh  and  all  the  strangers  who  were  con- 
stantly passing  through  her  gates,  at  the  same  time.  Life 
in  those  days  was  full  of  pictorial  circumstances  which  do 
not  belong  to  ours.  One  is  inclined  to  wonder  sometimes 
whether  the  many  additional  comforts  we  possess  make  up 
for  that  perpetual  movement  in  the  air,  the  excitement, 
the  communication  of  new  ideas,  the  strange  sights  both 
pleasant  and  terrible.  The  burning  of  a  witch  or  a  heretic 
is  perhaps  too  tremendous  a  sensation  to  be  desired  by  the 
most  heroic  spectator  ;  but  the  perpetual  drama  going  on 
thus  before  the  eyes  of  all  the  world,  and  giving  to  the 
poorest  an  absolute  share  in  every  new  and  strange  thing, 
must  have  added  a  reality  to  national  life  which  no  news- 
papers can  give.  That  the  people  remain  always  eager  for 
this  share  in  historical  events,  the  crowds  that  never  weary 
of  gazing  at  passing  princes,  the  innumerable  audience  of 
the  picture  papers,  the  endless  reproduction  of  every  in- 
significant public  event,  from  a  procession  of  aldermen  to 
the  simplest  day's  journey  of  a  royal  personage,  abundantly 
testify.  In  the  days  of  the  Jameses  few  of  the  crowd 
could  read,  and  still  fewer  had  the  chance  of  reading.  A 
ballad  flying  from  voice  to  voice  across  the  country,  sung 
at  the  iugle-neuk,  repeated  from  one  to  another  in  the 


228  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

little  crowd  at  a  ' e  stairhead/'  in  which  the  grossest  humor- 
ous view  was  the  best  adapted  for  the  people,  represented 
popular  literature.  But  most  things  that  went  on  were 
visible  to  the  crowding  population.  They  saw  the  foreign 
visitors,  the  ambassadors,  the  knights,  each  with  his  dis- 
tinguishable crest,  who  came  to  meet  in  encounter  of 
arms  the  knights  of  the  Scottish  Court.  All  that  went  on 
they  had  their  share  in,  and  a  kind  of  acquaintance  with 
every  notability.  The  public  events  were  a  species  of  large 
emblazoned  history  which  he  who  ran  could  read. 

These  ballads  above  referred  to  came  to  singular  note, 
however,  in  one  of  the  many  discussions  between  England 
and  Scotland  which  were  carried  on  by  means  of  the  fre- 
quent envoys  sent  to  James  from  his  uncle.  The  Borders, 
it  appears,  were  full  of  this  flying  literature  sent  forth  by 
unknown  writers,  and  spread  probably  by,  here  and  there, 
a  wandering  friar,  more  glad  of  a  merry  rhyme  than  dis- 
concerted by  a  satire  against  his  own  cloth,  or  with  still 
more  relish  dispersing  over  the  countryside  reports  of 
King  Henry's  amours  and  divorces,  and  of  the  plundering 
of  abbeys  and  profane  assumption  of  sacred  rights  by  a 
monarch  who  was  so  far  from  sanctified.  Popular  proph- 
ecies of  how  a  new  believing  king  should  be  raised  up  to 
disconcert  the  heretics,  and  on  the  northern  side  of  the 
Border  of  the  speedy  elevation  of  James  to  the  throne  of 
England,  and  final  victorious  triumph  of  the  Scottish  side, 
flew  from  village  to  village,  exciting  at  last  the  alarm  of 
Henry  and  his  council,  who  made  formal  complaint  of 
them  at  the  Scottish  Court,  drawing  from  James  a  prom- 
ise that  if  any  of  his  subjects  should  be  found  to  be  the 
authors  of  such  productions  they  should  suffer  death  for 
it — a  heavy  penalty  for  literary  transgression.  In  Scotland 
farther  north  it  was  another  kind  of  ballad  which  was  said 
and  sung,  or  whispered  under  the  breath  with  many  a  peal 
of  rude  laughter,  the  Satires  of  "Davy  Lindsay"  and 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.       229 

many  a  lesser  poet — ludicrous  stories  of  erring  priests  and 
friars,  indecent  but  humorous,  with  lamentable  tales  of 
dues  exacted  and  widows  robbed,  and  all  the  sins  of  the 
Church,  the  proud  bishop  and  his  lemaus,  the  avaricious 
priest  and  his  exactions,  the  confessors  who  bullied  a 
dying  penitent  into  gifts  which  injured  his  family,  and  all 
the  well-worn  scandals  by  which  in  every  time  of  refor- 
mation the  coarser  imagination  of  the  populace  is  stirred. 
If  James  himself  was  startled  into  an  angry  demand  how 
such  things  could  be  after  he  had  witnessed  the  perform- 
ance of  David  Lindsay's  play,  which  was  trimmed  into 
comparative  decency  for  courtly  ears,  it  may  be  supposed 
what  was  the  effect  of  that  and  still  broader  assaults,  upon 
the  unchasteued  imagination  of  the  people.  The  Reforma- 
tion progressed  by  great  strides  by  such  rude  yet  able  help 
as  well  as  by  the  purer  methods  of  religion.  The  priests, 
however,  do  not  seem  to  have  made  war  on  the  ballad- 
makers,  as  the  great  King  of  England  would  have  had 
his  nephew  do.  Buchanan,  indeed,  whose  classic  weapons 
had  been  brought  into  this  literary  crusade,  and  who  also 
had  his  fling  at  the  Franciscans  as  well  as  his  coarser  and 
more  popular  brethren,  was  imprisoned  for  a  time,  and  had 
to  withdraw  from  his  country,  but  the  poets  of  the  people, 
far  more  effective,  would  seem  to  have  escaped. 

All  this,  however,  probably  seemed  of  but  little  impor- 
tance to  James  in  comparison  with  the  greater  affairs  of 
the  kingdom  of  which  his  hands  were  full.  "When  the 
episode  of  his  marriage  was  over,  and  still  more  important 
an  heir  secured,  he  returned  to  that  imperial  track  in 
which  he  had  acquitted  himself  so  well.  All  would  seem 
to  have  been  in  order  in  the  center  of  the  kingdom  ;  the 
Borders  were  as  quiet  as  it  was  possible  for  the  Borders  to 
be  ;  and  only  the  remote  Highlands  and  islands  remained 
still  insubordinate,  in  merely  nominal  subjection  to  the  laws 
of  the  kingdom.  James,  we  are  told,  had  long  intended 


230  EOYAL  EDINBURGH. 

to  make  one  of  the  royal  raids  so  familiar  to  Scottish  his- 
tory among  his  doubtful  subjects  of  these  parts,  and  ac- 
cordingly an  expedition  was  very  carefully  prepared,  twelve 
ships  equipped  both  for  comfort  and  for  war,  with  every 
device  known  to  the  time  for  provisioning  them  and  keep- 
ing them  in  full  efficiency.  We  are  told  that  the  English 
authorities  looking  on,  were  exceedingly  suspicious  of  this 
voyage,  not  knowing  whither  such  preparations  might  tend, 
while  all  Scotland  watched  the  setting  out  of  the  expedi- 
tion almost  as  much  in  the  dark  as  to  its  motive,  and  full 
of  wonder  as  to  where  the  King  could  be  going.  Bonfires 
were  blazing  on  all  the  hilltops  in  rejoicing  for  the  birth 
of  a  prince  when  James  took  his  way  with  his  fleet  down 
the  Firth.  Pinkerton,  who  ought  to  have  known  better, 
talks  of  "  the  acclamations  of  numerous  spectators  on  the 
adjacent  hills  and  shores  "  as  if  the  great  estuary  had  been  a 
little  river.  It  might  well  be  that  both  in  Fife  and  Lothian, 
there  were  eager  lookers-on,  as  soon  as  it  was  seen  that  the 
fleet  was  in  motion,  to  see  the  ships  pass  :  but  their  ac- 
claims must  have  been  loud  indeed  to  carry  from  Leith  to 
Kinghorn.  The  King  sailed  early  in  June  1540  towards 
the  north.  Many  a  yacht  and  pleasure  ship  still  follows 
the  same  route  round  the  Scottish  coast  towards  the  wild 
attractions  of  the  islands. 

"  Merrily,  merrily,  bounds  the  bark, 

She  bounds  before  the  gale, 
The  mountain  breeze  from  Ben-na-darch 

Is  joyous  in  her  sail. 
With  fluttering  sound  like  laughter  hoarse 

The  cords  and  canvas  strain, 
The  waves  divided  by  her  force 
In  rippling  eddies  chased  her  course 

As  if  they  laughed  again." 

But  it  was  on  no  pleasure  voyage  that  James  had  set 
out.    He  had  in  his  twelve  ships  two  thousand  armed  men, 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.       231 

led  by  the  most  trusted  lords  of  Scotland,  and  his  mission 
was  to  reduce  to  order  the  claus  who  knew  so  little  what  a 
king's  dignity  was,  or  the  restraints  of  law,  or  the  pursuits 
of  industry.  No  stand  would  seem  to  have  been  anywhere 
made  against  him.  Many  of  the  chiefs  of  the  more  tur- 
bulent tribes  were  brought  off  to  the  ships,  not  so  much 
as  prisoners  in  consequence  of  their  own  misdoings,  but 
as  hostages  for  their  clans  :  and  the  startled  isles,  overawed 
by  the  sight  of  the  King  and  his  great  ships,  and  by  the 
more  generous  motive  of  anxiety  for  their  own  chieftains 
in  pledge  for  them,  calmed  down  out  of  their  wild  ways, 
and  ceased  from  troubling  in  a  manner  unprecedented  in 
their  turbulent  history. 

An  incidental  consequence  of  this  voyage  sounds  oddly 
modern,  as  if  it  might  have  been  a  transcript  from  the 
most  recent  records.  James  perceived,  or  more  probably 
had  his  attention  directed  to  the  fact,  that  the  fishermen 
of  the  north  were  much  molested  by  fishing  vessels  from 
Holland,  Flanders,  and  the  Scandinavian  coasts,  who  in- 
terfered with  their  fishing,  sometimes  even  thrusting  them 
by  violence  of  arms  out  of  their  own  waters.  The  King 
accordingly  detached  one  or  two  of  his  vessels  under  the 
command  of  Maxwell,  his  admiral,  to  inquire  into  these 
high-handed  proceedings,  with  the  result  that  one  of  the 
foreign  fisher  pirate-ships  was  seized  and  brought  to  Leith 
to  answer  for  their  misdoings.  There  they  were  repri- 
manded and  bound  over  to  better  behavior,  then  dismissed 
without  further  penalty.  How  little  effectual,  however, 
this  treatment  was,  is  exemplified  by  the  fact  that  the 
self-same  offense  continues  to  be  repeated  until  this  very 
day. 

There  would  seem  to  have  been  a  little  pause  of  calm 
and  comfort  in  James's  life  after  this  victorious  expedition. 
Clouds  already  bigger  than  a  man's  hand  were  forming  on 
his  horizon  ;  the  country  had  begun  to  be  agitated  through- 


232  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

out  its  depths  with  the  rising  forces  of  the  reform,  and  the 
priests  who  had  always  surrounded  James  were  hurrying 
on  in  the  truculence  of  terror  to  sterner  and  sterner  en- 
actments against  heretics  :  while  he,  probably  even  yet 
but  moderately  interested,  thinking  of  other  things,  and 
though  adding  to  the  new  laws  which  he  was  persuaded 
to  originate  in  this  sense,  conditions  to  the  effect  that  cor- 
responding reforms  were  to  be  wrought  in  the  behavior  of 
the  priesthood, — had  not  entered  at  all  into  the  fierce 
current  of  theological  strife.  He  followed  the  faith  in 
which  he  had  been  bred,  revolted  rather  than  attracted  by 
the  proceedings  and  pretensions  of  his  uncle  of  England, 
willing  that  the  bishops,  who  probably  knew  best,  and 
who  were,  as  he  complained  to  the  English  ambassador, 
the  only  men  of  sense  and  ability  near  him,  should  have 
their  own  way  in  their  own  concerns  ;  but  for  himself 
much  more  intent  on  the  temporal  welfare  of  his  kingdom 
than  on  its  belief,  or  the  waves  of  opinion  which  might 
blow  over  it.  He  had  just  been  very  successful  in  what  no 
doubt  seemed  to  him  an  enterprise  much  more  kingly  and 
important — the  subjugation  of  the  islands.  He  was  happy 
and  prosperous  in  his  private  life,  his  Queen  having  per- 
formed the  high  duty  expected  of  her  in  providing  the 
kingdom  with  an  heir,  indeed  with  two  sons,  to  make,  as 
appeared,  assurance  doubly  sure  ;  and  though  the  burn- 
ing of  a  heretic  was  not  a  pleasant  circumstance,  Beatoun 
and  the  rest  of  the  brotherhood  were  too  clever  and  help- 
ful as  men  of  the  world  to  be  easily  dispensed  with.  James 
had,  there  can  be  no  doubt,  much  reason  to  be  discon- 
tented and  dissatisfied,  as  almost  all  his  predecessors  had 
been,  with  the  nobility  of  his  kingdom.  Apart  from  some 
of  those  young  companions-in-arms  who  were  delightful  in 
the  camp  and  field  but  useless  in  the  council  chamber,  his 
state  of  mind  would  seem  to  have  resembled  more  the 
modern  mood  which  is  represented  by  the  word  "  bored  " 


JAMES  V  :   THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.     233 

than  any  other  more  dignified  expression.  The  priests 
might  be  fierce  (as  indeed  were  the  lords,  still  more)  but 
they  were  able,  and  knew  something  of  the  necessities  of 
government.  The  barons  disgusted  him  with  their  petty 
jealousies,  their  want  of  instruction,  their  incapacity  for 
any  broad  or  statesmanlike  view,  and  there  would  seem 
little  doubt  that  he  dispensed  with  their  services  as  much 
as  possible,  and  turned  to  those  persons  who  compre- 
hended him  with  a  natural  movement  which  unfortu- 
nately, however,  is  never  fortunate  in  a  king.  Something 
of  the  severance  between  himself  and  those  who  were 
nearest  to  him  in  rank,  which  had  ruined  his  grandfather, 
showed  itself  as  he  advanced  towards  the  gravity  of  man- 
hood :  and  the  fatal  name  of  favorite  began  to  be  attached 
to  one  man  at  least  in  the  Court,  who  would  seem  to  have 
understood  better  than  the  others  the  ways  and  inten- 
tions of  James.  But  in  the  meantime  the  clouds  were  only 
gathering ;  the  darkness  had  not  begun.  A  year  or  two 
before,  the  King  had  given  to  the  legal  faculty  of  Scot- 
land a  form  and  constitution  which  it  has  retained  to  this 
day.  He  had  instituted  the  Court  of  Sessions,  the  "Feif- 
teen,"  the  law  lords  in  their  grave  if  short-lived  dignity. 
He  had  begun  to  build  and  repair  and  decorate  at  Holy- 
rood  and  Linlithgow.  "He  sent  to  Denmark,"  says  Pits- 
cottie,  "  and  brought  home  great  horss  and  meares  and 
put  them  in  parks  that  their  offspring  might  be  gotten  to 
sustein  the  warres  when  need  was.  Also,  he  sent  and  fur- 
nished the  country  with  all  kinds  of  craftsmen  such  as 
Frenchmen,  Spaniards,  and  Dutchmen,  which  ever  was 
the  first  of  their  profession  that  could  be  had."  He  went 
even  so  far  in  his  desire  to  develop  the  natural  wealth  of 
his  kingdom  that  he  brought  over  certain  German  wise 
men  to  see  if  gold  could  be  found  in  the  mines,  of  which 
there  has  always  been  a  tradition,  as  probably  in  most 
countries.  All  these  pacific  enterprises  occupied  James's 


234  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

time  and  helped  on  the  prosperity  of  the  country.     But 
evil  times  were  close  at  hand. 

One  of  the  first  indications  that  the  dreadful  round  of 
misfortune  was  about  to  begin  was  the  sudden  denuncia- 
tion of  James  Hamilton,  the  bastard  of  Arran,  as  a  con- 
spirator against  the  King,  an  event  which  Pitscottie  nar- 
rates as  happening  in  the  year  1541.  He  had  been  a 
favorite  of  the  King  in  his  youth,  and  a  great  champion 
against  the  Douglas  faction,  and  it  was  indeed  his  intem- 
perate and  imprudent  rage  which  determined  the  fight 
called  Clear  the  Causeway,  and  wrought  much  harm  to 
his  own  party.  He  had  been  high  in  favor  for  a  time, 
probably  on  the  ground  of  his  enmity  to  the  honse  of 
Angus,  then  had  fallen  into  discredit,  but  had  lately 
been  employed  in  certain  public  offices,  and  if  we  may 
trust  Pitscottie,  had  been  put  into  some  such  position 
by  the  priests  as  that  which  Saul  of  Tarsus  held  in  the 
service  of  the  persecuting  ecclesiastics  of  Jerusalem.  At 
all  events  his  sudden  accusation  as  plotting  against  the 
King's  life,  and  especially  as  doing  so  in  the  interests  of 
the  Douglases,  was  evidently  as  startling  and  extraor- 
dinary to  the  great  officials  to  whom  the  communication 
was  made  as  it  would  be  to  the  reader  who  has  heard  of 
this  personage  only  as  the  infuriated  opponent  of  Angus 
and  his  party.  No  credence  seems  to  have  been  given  to 
the  story  at  first,  though  it  was  told  by  another  Hamil- 
ton, a  cousin  of  the  culprit.  As  this  happened,  however, 
in  the  King's  absence  from  Edinburgh,  the  lords  thought 
it  a  wise  precaution  to  secure  Sir  James,  and,  according 
to  Pitscottie,  proceeded  in  their  own  dignified  persons — 
the  Lord  Treasurer,  Secretary,  and  "  Mr.  Household," 
preceded  by  Lyon  King-of-Arms — to  his  lodging  in  Edin- 
burgh, whence  they  conveyed  him  to  the  castle.  Such 
arrestations  would  probably  cause  but  little  excitement, 
only  a  momentary  rush  and  gazing  of  the  crowd  as  the 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      235 

group  with  its  little  band  of  attendants  and  defenders 
passed  upward  along  the  High  Street,  the  herald's  tabard 
alone  betraying  its  character.  Sir  James  Hamilton,  how- 
ever, was  very  well  known  and  little  loved,  and  small 
would  be  the  sympathy  in  the  looks  of  the  citizens,  and 
many  the  stern  nods  and  whispers  of  satisfaction  that  ven- 
geance had  seized  him  at  length.  The  King,  like  his  rep- 
resentatives, was  astonished  by  the  accusation,  but  when 
he  heard  of  the  terrible  ' '  dittay  "  which  had  been  brought 
against  Hamilton  "  he  came  suddenly  out  of  Falkland, 
where  His  Grace  was  for  the  time,  and  brought  the  said 
Sir  James  out  of  the  castle  to  the  Tolbooth,  and  gave  him 
fair  assize  of  the  lords  and  barons,  who  convicted  him  of 
sundry  points  of  treason  ;  and  thereafter  he  was  headed 
and  quartered,  and  his  lands  annexed  to  the  Crown." 

It  is  a  curious  question,  which  however  none  of  the 
historians  think  of  asking,  whether  there  could  be  any 
connection  between  the  scheme,  if  any,  for  which  the 
Lady  Glamis  suffered,  and  this  wholly  unexpected  out- 
break of  murderous  intention  on  the  part  of  Hamilton. 
The  Hamiltons  and  Douglases  were  sworn  enemies,  yet 
greater  wonders  have  been  seen  than  the  union  of  two 
feudal  foes  to  compass  the  destruction  of  the  enemy  of 
both.  Angus  and  his  brothers  banished,  but  little  forget- 
ful of  all  that  had  happened,  and  trusting  in  the  favor  of 
King  Henry,  were  soon  to  show  themselves  at  the  head 
of  expeditions  hostile  to  Scotland  across  the  Border. 
Were  these  two  sudden  disclosures  of  unexpected  treachery 
the  manifestations  of  a  deep-laid  plot  which  might  have 
further  developments — if  with  the  bastard  of  Arran  also 
perhaps  in  still  more  unlikely  quarters  ?  It  is  but  a  con- 
jecture, yet  it  is  one  that  might  seem  justified  by  two 
isolated  events  so  extraordinary,  and  by  the  state  of  dis- 
couragement and  misery  into  which  James  seems  soon  to 
have  fallen.  Pitscottie  relates  that  the  King  "  took  aue 


236  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

great  suspition  of  his  nobles,  thinking  that  either  ane  or 
other  of  them  would  deceive  him  ; "  and  then  there  began 
to  appear  to  him  "visions  in  his  bed/'  He  thought  he 
saw  Sir  James  Hamilton,  fierce  and  vengeful,  appearing  to 
him  in  the  darkness  with  a  drawn  sword,  with  which  he  cut 
off  the  King's  right  arm.  Next  time  the  cruel  specter  ap- 
peared it  upbraided  him  with  an  unjust  sentence  and  struck 
off  the  other  arm  :  "Now  therefore  thou  sail  want  both  thy 
armes  and  sail  remain  in  sorrow  ane  while,  and  then  I 
will  come  and  stryk  thy  head  from  thee,"  said  the  angry 
ghost.  Whatever  may  be  the  reader's  opinion  about  the 
reality  of  these  visions,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  they 
show  deep  depression  in  the  mind  of  James  to  whom  they 
came.  He  woke  out  of  his  sleep  in  great  excitement  and 
terror,  and  told  his  attendants  what  he  had  dreamed,  who 
were  very  "discontent  of  his  visioun,  thinking  that  they 
would  hear  hastily  tidings  of  the  same. " 

"  On  the  morning  word  came  to  the  King  that  the  prince  was 
very  sick  and  like  to  die.  When  the  King  heard  thereof  he 
hasted  to  Sanct  Andros,  but,  or  he  could  come  there  the  prince 
was  depairted,  whereat  the  King  was  verrie  sad  and  dolorous. 
Notwithstanding  immediately  thereafter  the  post  came  out  of 
Stirling  to  the  King  showing  him  that  his  second  son,  the  Duke 
of  Albany,  could  not  live  ;  and  or  the  King  could  be  in  Stirling 
he  was  depairted.  Whose  departures  were  both  within  fortie- 
eight  hours,  which  caused  great  lamentations  to  be  in  Scotland 
and  in  especial  by  the  Queen,  their  mother.  But  the  Queen 
comforted  the  King,  saying  they  were  young  enough,  and  God 
would  send  them  more  succession." 

There  is  no  suggestion,  such  as  might  have  been  natural 
enough  at  that  age,  of  poison  or  foul  play  in  the  death  of 
the  two  infants — nothing  but  misfortune  and  fatality  and 
the  dark  shadows  closing  over  a  life  hitherto  so  bright. 
James  was  the  last  of  his  name  ;  the  childless  Albany  in 
France,  whom  Scotland  did  not  love,  was  the  only  man 
surviving  of  his  kindred,  and  it  is  not  wonderful  if  the 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      237 

King's  heart  failed  him  in  such  a  catastrophe,  or  if  he 
thought  himself  doomed  of  heaven.  When  this  great 
domestic  affliction  came  to  him  he  was  on  the  eve  of  a 
breach  with  England,  brought  about  not  only  by  the  usual 
mutual  aggravations  upon  the  Border,  but  by  other  mat- 
ters of  graver  importance.  King  Henry  had  made  many 
efforts  to  draw  the  Scottish  King  to  his  side.  He  had  dis- 
coursed to  him  himself  by  letter,  he  had  sent  him  not  only 
ambassadors  but  preachers,  he  had  done  everything  that 
could  be  done  to  detach  the  young  monarch  from  the  band 
of  sovereigns  who  were  against  England,  and  the  alle- 
giance of  the  Pope.  Latterly  the  correspondence  had  be- 
come very  eager  and  passionate  on  Henry's  side.  He  had 
repeatedly  invited  his  nephew  to  visit  him,  and  many 
negotiations  had  passed  between  them  on  the  subject. 
The  project  was  so  far  advanced  that  Henry  came  to  York 
to  meet  James,  and  waited  there  for  nearly  a  week  for  his 
arrival.  But  there  was  great  reluctance  on  the  Scottish 
side  to  risk  their  King  so  far  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Border.  They  had  suggested  Xewcastle  as  a  more  safe 
place  of  meeting,  but  this  had  been  rejected  on  the  part  of 
the  English  king.  Finally,  Henry  left  York  in  great  re- 
sentment, which  was  aggravated  by  a  defeat  upon  the 
Border.  Pitscottie  tells  us  that  he  sent  a  herald  to  James 
declaring  that  he  considered  the  truce  between  them 
broken  ;  that  "  he  should  take  such  order  with  him  as  he 
took  with  his  father  before  him  ;  for  he  had  yet  that  same 
wand  to  ding  him  with  that  dang  his  father  ;  that  is  to 
say,  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  living  that  strak  the  field  of 
Flodden,  who  slew  his  father  with  many  of  the  nobles  of 
Scotland."  The  King  of  Scotland  thought,  the  chronicler 
adds,  that  these  were  "uncouth  and  sharp  words" — an 
opinion  in  which  the  reader  will  agree.  But  whether 
Pitscottie  is  verbally  correct  or  not  it  is  very  evident  that 
Henry  did  not  hesitate  to  rate  his  nephew  in  exceedingly 


238  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

sharp  and  discourteous  terms,  as  for  instance  bidding  him 
not  to  make  a  brute  of  himself  by  listening  to  the  priests 
who  would  lead  any  man  by  the  nose  who  gave  them  cre- 
dence. The  negotiations  altogether  were  carried  on  from 
the  English  side  in  a  very  arrogant  manner  as  comported 
with  Henry's  character,  made  all  the  more  overbearing 
towards  James  by  their  relationship,  which  gave  him  a 
certain  natural  title  to  bully  his  sister's  son. 

And  everything  in  Scotland  was  now  tending  to  the 
miseries  of  a  divided  council  and  a  nation  rent  asunder  by 
internal  differences.  The  new  opinions  were  making 
further  progress  day  by  da}7,  the  priests  becoming  more 
fierce  in  their  attempts  to  crush  by  violence  the  force  of 
the  Reformation — attempts  which  in  their  very  cruelty  and 
ferocity  betrayed  a  certain  growing  despair.  When  Norfolk 
came  to  Scotland  from  Henry — an  ill-omened  messenger  if 
what  is  said  above  of  Henry's  threat  was  true — the  Scot- 
tish gentlemen  sought  him  secretly  with  confessions  of 
their  altered  faith  ;  and  the  ambassador  made  the  start- 
ling report  to  Henry  that  James's  own  mind  was  in  so  wav- 
ering and  uncertain  a  state  that  if  the  priests  did  not 
drive  him  into  war  during  the  current  summer  he  would 
confiscate  the  possessions  of  the  Church  before  the  year 
was  out.  But  Norfolk's  mission,  which  was  in  itself  a 
threat,  and  the  presence  of  the  Douglases  over  the  Border, 
who  had  never  ceased  to  be  upheld  by  Henry,  and  whose 
secret  machinations,  of  which  Lady  G-lamis  and  James 
Hamilton  had  been  victims,  were  now  about  to  culminate 
in  open  mischief,  all  contributed  to  exasperate  the  mind 
of  James.  That  he  was  not  supported  as  his  father  had 
been  by  the  nobility,  who  alone  had  the  power  of  giving 
effect  to  his  call  for  a  general  armament,  is  evident  from 
the  first.  His  priestly  counselors  could  support  him  by 
the  imposts  which  he  made  freely  upon  the  revenues  of  the 
Church,  not  always  without  complaint  on  their  part  ;  but 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      239 

they  were  of  comparatively  little  influence  in  bringing  to- 
gether the  hosts  who  had  to  do  the  fighting  ;  and  from 
the  first  the  nobility, — half  of  which  or  more  was  leavened 
with  Reformation  doctrines  and  felt  that  their  best  sup- 
port was  in  England — while  the  whole,  almost  without 
exception,  resented  the  prominence  of  the  Church  in  the 
national  councils,  hating  and  scorning  her  interference  in 
secular  and  especially  in  warlike  matters,  as  is  the  case  in 
every  age, — showed  itself  hostile.  After  various  incursions 
on  the  part  of  England,  made  with  much  bravado  and 
considerable  damage,  one  of  which  was  headed  by  Angus 
and  his  brother  George  Douglas  (this  latter,  however,  be- 
ing promptly  punished  and  defeated  on  the  spot  by  the 
brave  Borderers),  James  made  the  usual  call  for  a  general 
assembly  of  forces  on  the  Boroughmuir  :  but  he  had  ad- 
vanced only  a  little  way  on  his  march  to  the  Borders  when 
he  was  stopped  by  the  declaration  of  the  lords  that  they 
would  only  act  on  the  defensive,  and  would  on  no  account 
go  out  of  Scotland.  The  fathers  of  these  same  lords  had 
followed  James  IV.,  though  with  the  strongest  disapproval, 
to  the  fatal  field  of  Flodden,  their  loyalty  triumphing  over 
their  judgment  :  but  the  sons  on  either  side  had  no  such 
bond  between  them,  James  disbanded  in  disgust  the 
reluctant  host,  which  considered  less  the  honor  of  Scot- 
land than  their  own  safety  ;  but  got  together  afterwards 
a  smaller  army  under  the  leadership  of  Lord  Maxwell,  with 
which  to  try  over  again  the  old  issue.  Pitscottie's  account 
of  the  discussions  and  dissensions,  and  of  all  the  scorns 
which  subdued  James's  spirit,  is  very  graphic.  Norfolk 
had  led  a  great  body  of  men  into  Scotland,  who  though 
not  advancing  very  far  had  done  great  harm  burning  and 
ravaging  ;  but  checked  by  a  smaller  force,  which  held  him 
back  without  giving  battle,  had  finally  retired  across  the 
Border,  where  James  was  very  anxious  to  have  followed 
him. 


24:0  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

' '  The  King's  mind  was  very  ardent  on  battel  on  English  ground , 
which  when  the  lords  perceived  they  passed  again  to  the  council, 
and  concluded  that  they  would  not  follow  the  Duke  of  Norfolk 
at  that  time  for  the  King's  pleasure,  because  they  said  that  it  was 
not  grounded  upon  no  good  cause  or  reasone,  and  that  he  was 
ane  better  priests'  king  nor  he  was  theirs,  and  used  more  of 
priests'  counsel  nor  theirs.  Therefore  they  had  the  less  will  to 
fight  with  him,  and  said  it  was  more  meritoriously  done  to  hang 
all  such  as  gave  counsel  to  the  King  to  break  his  promises  to  the 
King  of  England,  whereof  they  perceived  great  inconvenients  to 
befall.  When  they  had  thus  concluded,  and  the  King  being  ad- 
vertised thereof  the  King  departed  with  his  familiar  servants  to 
Edinburgh  ;  but  the  army  and  council  remained  still  at  Lauder." 

It  was  a  fatal  spot  for  such  a  controversy,  the  spot  where, 
two  generations  before,  the  favorite  friends  and  counselors 
of  James  III,  whether  guilty  or  not  guilty — who  can  say  ? 
— were  hanged  over  the  bridge  as  an  example  to  all  common 
men  who  should  pretend  to  serve  a  king  whose  peers  and 
the  nobles  of  his  realm  were  shut  out  from  the  first  of  his 
favor.  James  V  had  in  his  train  some  familiar  servants, 
confidants  of  his  many  public  undertakings,  who  were  not 
of  noble  blood  or,  at  least  of  distinguished  rank,  and  his 
angry  withdrawal  might  well  be  explained  by  his  determina- 
tion to  save  them,  if  indeed  any  explanations  beyond  his 
vexed  and  miserable  sense  of  humiliation  and  desertion 
were  necessary  to  account  for  it.  He  left  the  lords,  whom 
he  would  seem  to  have  had  no  longer  either  the  means  or 
the  heart  to  confront,  saying  in  his  rage  and  shame  that 
he  would  ''either  make  them  fight  or  flee,  or  else  Scotland 
should  not  keep  him  and  them  both,"  and  returned  to 
Edinburgh  sick  at  heart  to  his  Queen,  who  was  not  in  very 
good  health  to  cheer  him — passing,  no  doubt,  with  a 
deepened  sense  of  humiliation  through  the  crowds  which 
would  throng  about  for  news,  and  to  whom  the  spectacle 
of  their  King  thus  returning  discomfited  was  no  pleasant 
sight :  if  it  were  not,  perhaps,  that  many  among  them  had 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE. 

now  begun  to  think  all  failures  and  disappointments  were 
so  many  proofs  of  the  displeasure  of  heaven  against  one 
who  would  not  take  upon  him  the  office  of  reformer. 

When  James  heard  soon  after  that  his  rebellious  lords 
had  disbanded  their  host,  he  collected  a  smaller  army  to 
revenge  the  ravages  of  Norfolk,  issuing,  according  to  Pits- 
cottie,  a  proclamation  bidding  all  who  loved  him  be  ready 
within  twenty-four  hours  "  to  follow  the  King  wherever 
he  pleased  to  pass";  but  even  this  new  levy  was  little 
subordinate.  After  it  had  penetrated  a  little  way  into 
England  a  fatal  mistake  arose — an  idea  that  Oliver  Sinclair, 
the  King's  "  minion,"  whom  he  had  sent  to  read  a  mani- 
festo to  the  army,  had  been  appointed  its  general — upon 
which  the  new  bands,  disgusted  in  their  turn,  fell  into  a 
forced  retreat,  and  getting  involved  in  the  broken  ground 
of  Solway  Moss  were  there  pursued  and  surrounded  by  the 
English,  miserably  defeated  and  put  to  flight.  "There 
was  but  ane  small  number  slain  in  the  field,"  says  Pits- 
cottie,  "  to  wit,  there  was  slain  on  both  sides  but  twenty- 
four,  whereof  was  nine  Scottishmen  and  fifteen  English- 
men " ;  a  very  great  number,  however,  were  taken  pris- 
oners, many  of  the  gentlemen,  it  is  suggested,  preferring 
captivity  to  the  encounter  of  the  King  after  such  an  in- 
excusable catastrophe.  We  are  not  told  why  it  was  that 
James  had  not  himself  taken  the  command  of  his  army. 
He  does  not  even  seem  to  have  accompanied  it,  perhaps 
fearing  that  personal  opposition  which  was  an  insult  to  a 
king  in  those  days. 

"  When  these  news  came  to  the  King  of  Scotland  where  he  was 
for  the  time,  how  his  lords  were  taken  and  had  in  England,  and 
his  army  defaitt,  he  grew  wondrous  dollorous  and  pensive,  seeing 
no  good  success  to  chance  him  over  his  enemies.  Then  he  began 
to  remord  his  conscience,  and  thought  his  misgovernance  towards 
God  had  the  wyte  therof  and  was  the  principal  cause  of  his 
misfortune  ;  calling  to  mind  how  he  had  broken  his  promise  to 
16 


242  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

his  uncle  the  King  of  England,  and  had  lost  the  hearts  of  his 
nobles  throw  evil  counsel  and  false  flattery  of  his  bishops,  and 
those  private  counsellors  and  his  courtiers,  not  regarding  his 
wyse  lords'  counsels." 

"He  passed  to  Edinburgh."  adds  the  chronicler,  "and 
there  remained  eight  days  with  great  dolor  and  lamenta- 
tion for  the  tinsell  (loss)  of  his  lieges  and  shame  to  him- 
self." Discouragement  beyond  the  reach  of  mortal  help 
or  hope  seemed  to  have  taken  hold  of  the  unfortunate 
King.  He  saw  himself  alone,  no  one  standing  by  him, 
his  nobles  hostile,  his  people  indifferent ;  he  had  vowed 
that  Scotland  should  not  be  broad  enough  to  hold  both 
them  and  him,  but  he  had  no  power  to  carry  out  this 
angry  threat.  His  life  had  been  threatened  in  mysterious 
ways  ;  he  had  lost  his  children,  his  confidence  in  himself 
and  his  fortunes  ;  last  and  worst  of  all,  he  was  dishonored 
in  the  eyes  of  the  world.  His  army  had  refused  to  advance, 
his  soldiers  to  fight.  He  was  the  King,  but  able  to  give 
effect  to  none  of  a  king's  wishes — neither  to  punish  his 
enemies  nor  to  carry  out  his  promises.  He  who  had  done 
so  much  for  his  realm  could  do  no  more.  He  who  had 
ridden  the  Border  further  and  swifter  than  any  man-at- 
arms  to  carry  the  terror  of  justice  and  the  sway  of  law — 
who  had  daunted  the  dauntless  Highlands  and  held  the 
fiercest  chiefs  in  check — who  had  been  courted  by  pope 
and  emperor,  and  admired  and  feasted  at  the  splendid 
Courts  of  France — he  who  had  been  the  King  of  the  Com- 
mons, the  idol  of  the  people — was  now  cast  down  and 
miserable,  the  most  shamed  and  helpless  of  kings. 

There  seems  no  reason  why  James  should  have  so 
entirely  lost  heart.  There  had  already  been  moments  in 
his  life  when  he  had  suffered  sore  discouragement  and 
overthrow,  yet  never  had  been  overcome.  But  now  it  is 
clear  he  felt  himself  at  the  end  of  his  resources.  How 
could  he  ever  hold  up  his  head  again  ?  a  man  who  could 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      243 

not  keep  his  own  kingdom  from  invasion,  or  avenge  him- 
self upon  his  enemies  !  After  he  had  lingered  a  little  in 
Edinburgh,  where  the  Queen  was  now  near  the  moment 
which  should  give  another  heir  to  Scotland,  he  left  the 
capital — perhaps  to  save  her  at  such  a  time  from  the  sight 
and  the  contagion  of  his  despair — and  crossed  the  Firth 
to  Falkland,  a  place  so  associated  with  stirring  passages 
in  his  career.  But  there  his  sickness  of  heart  turned  to 
illness  of  body  ;  he  became  so  "vehement  sick"  that  his 
life  was  despaired  of;  he  was  "very  near  strangled  to 
death  by  extreme  melancholic."  One  hope  remained,  that 
the  Queen  might  restore  some  confidence  to  his  failing 
strength  and  mind  by  an  heir  to  the  crown,  another 
James,  for  whom  it  might  be  worth  while  to  live.  James 
sent  for  some  of  his  friends,  "  certain  of  his  lords,  both 
spiritual  and  temporal,"  to  help  him  to  bear  this  time  of 
suspense,  and  advise  him  what  might  yet  be  done  to  set 
matters  right,  who  surrounded  him,  as  may  be  imagined, 
very  anxiously,  fearing  the  issue. 

"  By  this  the  post  came  out  of  Linlithgow  showing  the  King 
good  tidings  that  the  Queen  was  delivered.  The  King  inquired 
whether  it  was  man  or  woman.  The  messenger  said  it  was  ane 
fair  dochter.  The  King  answered  and  said,  '  Farewell  !  it  came 
with  ane  lass,  and  it  will  pass  with  ane  lass,'  and  so  commended 
himself  to  Almighty  God,  and  spoke  little  from  thereforth,  but 
turned  his  back  to  his  lords  and  his  face  to  the  wall." 

Even  at  this  bitter  moment,  however,  the  dying  Prince 
was  not  left  alone  with  his  last  disappointment.  Cardinal 
Beatoun,  whose  influence  had  been  so  inauspicious  in  his 
life,  pressed  forward,  "  seeing  him  begin  to  fail  of  his 
strength  and  natural  speech,"  and  thrust  upon  him  a 
paper  for  his  signature,  "  wherein  the  Cardinal  had  writ 
what  he  pleased  for  his  own  particular  weill,"  evidently 
with  some  directions  about  the  regency,  that  ordeal  which 
Scotland,  unhappily,  had  now  again  to  go  through.  When 


244  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

James  had  put  his  dying  hand  to  this  authority,  wrested 
from  him  in  his  last  weakness,  a  faint  light  of  peace  seems 
to  have  fallen  across  his  death-bed. 

"  As  I  have  shown  you,  he  turned  him  upon  his  back,  and 
looked  and  beheld  his  lords  around  about,  and  gave  ane  little 
lauchter,  syne  kissed  his  hand  and  gave  it  to  all  his  lords  about 
him,  and  thereafter  held  up  his  hands  to  God  and  yielded  the 
spirit." 

There  are  many  pathetic  death  scenes  in  history,  but 
few  more  touching.  His  father,  after  a  splendid  and 
prosperous  life,  had  fallen  "in  the  lost  battle,  borne 
down  by  the  flying  ; "  he,  after  a  career  almost  as  chiv- 
alrous and  splendid  and  full  of  noble  work  for  his  country, 
in  a  still  more  forlorn  overthrow  ;  his  hopes  all  gone 
from  him,  his  strength  broken  in  his  youth.  Nothing,  it 
would  seem,  could  save  these  princes,  so  noble  and  so 
unfortunate.  It  was  enough  to  bear  the  name  of  James 
Stewart  to  be  weighed  down  by  cruel  Fate.  But  before 
his  spirit  shook  off  the  mortal  coil  a  ray  of  peace  had 
shot  through  the  clouds  ;  he  looked  upon  the  anxious 
faces  of  his  friends,  some  of  whom  at  least  must  surely 
have  been  true  friends,  bound  to  him  by  comradeship 
and  brotherhood,  with  that  low  laugh  which  is  one  of 
the  most  touching  expressions  of  weakened  and  failing 
humanity — love  and  kindness  in  it,  and  a  certain  pleasure 
to  see  them  round  him  ;  and  yet  to  be  free  of  it  all — the 
heavy  kingship,  the  hopes  that  ever  failed,  the  friends 
that  so  rarely  were  true.  The  lips  that  touched  that 
cold  hand  which  he  kissed  before  he  gave  to  them  must 
have  trembled,  perhaps  with  compunction,  let  us  hope 
with  some  vow  of  fidelity  to  his  memory  and  trust. 

Thus  died  the  last  of  the  five  Jameses — the  last  in  one 
sense  of  that  unfortunate  but  gallant  line.  A  life  more 
swept  by  storms,  more  rent  asunder  by  conflicting  passions 
and  influences,  more  tragic  still  and  passionate  than 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      245 

theirs,  was  to  part  them  from  the  singularly  changed, 
modified,  and  modernized  successors  who,  with  a  differ- 
ence, were  to  wear  yet  drop  this  ancient  crown.  The' 
Stewarts  after  Mary  are  no  longer  like  those  that  went 
before.  James's  dying  words  came  in  some  curious 
fashion  true,  though  not  as  he  thought.  It  came  with  a 
lass  and  it  went  with  a  lass  that  ancient  crown.  When 
another  James  reached  the  throne  Scotland  was  no  more 
as  it  had  been. 

It  may  seem  a  fantastic  chronology  to  end  here  the 
records  of  the  Stewards  of  Scotland  :  but  it  is  I  think 
justified  by  this  change,  which  altered  altogether  the 
character  of  the  history  and  the  circumstances  of  the 
monarchs.  Henceforward  new  agencies,  new  powers, 
were  at  work  in  the  little  proud  and  self-contained  king- 
dom, which  had  maintained  its  independence  and  indi- 
viduality so  long.  Torn  asunder  by  rival  influences,  by 
intrigues  incessant  and  profound,  by  that  struggle  be- 
tween the  old  and  the  new  which  was  never  more  desper- 
ate than  in  her  bosom,  and  which,  being  a  religious  change 
chiefly,  was  one  of  life  and  death  :  and  with  a  monarch  no 
longer  native,  but  of  foreign  training  and  thoughts,  even 
if  she  had  not  been  a  woman  and  half  a  Tudor,  the  little 
ship  of  State,  the  gallant  little  nation,  plunged  amid  waves 
and  billows,  not  unfamiliar,  indeed,  but  fiercer  and  wilder 
than  ever  before,  with  winds  so  much  increased  in  force 
as  they  raged  over  wider  seas. 

The  Stewards  of  Scotland  here  ended  their  special  trust 
and  gave  in  their  account.  ISTo  race  was  ever  more  un- 
fortunate, but  I  think  we  may  say  that  none  more  nobly 
endeavored  to  discharge  that  high  commission.  With  one 
exception,  and  that  doubtful — for  a  man  may  be  weak  and 
may  not  be  brave  without  being  a  bad  man  or  even  king 
— every  bearer  of  this  fated  name  labored  with  courage 
and  constancy  at  the  great  work  of  elevating  his  country. 


246  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

"Another  for  Hector!"  cried  the  Highland  warrior 
when  his  young  chief  was  in  danger,  and  all  the  world 
has  read  the  story  with  moistened  eyes.  Another  for 
Scotland  !  had  been  the  cry  of  the  house  of  Stewart 
throughout  more  than  a  century.  As  one  man  fell  he 
handed  the  sword  to  another  ;  to  an  infant  hand  trained 
amid  feuds  and  anarchy,  but  always  clasping,  as  soon  as 
it  had  force  enough,  the  royal  weapon  with  royal  courage 
and  meaning.  None  of  the  Jameses  lived  beyond  the 
earliest  chapter  of  middle  age  ;  all  of  them  succeeded  in 
early  youth,  most  of  them  in  childhood  ;  and,  with  but 
that  uncertain  exception  of  James  III,  every  one  of  them 
was  actuated  by  a  noble  patriotism,  and  did  his  devoir 
manfully  for  the  improvement  and  development  of  his 
country.  They  Avere  noble  gentlemen  one  and  all  :  the 
bigotry,  the  egotism,  the  obstinacy  of  the  later  Stewarts 
were  not  in  them.  Knights  and  paladins  of  an  age  of  ro- 
mance, they  were  also  stern  executors  of  justice,  bold  in- 
novators, with  eyes  ever  open  to  every  expedient  of  prog- 
ress and  prosperity.  Their  faults  were  those  faults  of  a 
light  heart  and  genial  temperament,  which  are  the  most 
easily  understood  and  pardoned.  Under  their  sway  their 
country  and  their  little  capital  came  to  be  known  over 
Christendom  as  not  unworthy  to  hold  place  among  the 
reigning  kingdoms  and  cities  through  which  the  stream 
of  chivalry  flowed.  They  invented  the  trade,  the  ship- 
ping, the  laws  and  civic  order  of  Scotland.  Among  her 
heroes  there  are  none  more  worthy  of  everlasting  remem- 
brance. They  fulfilled  their  stewardry  with  a  unity  of 
purpose  and  a  steadfastness  of  aim  which,  when  we  take 
into  account  the  continually  recurring  lapses  of  long  mi- 
norities, is  one  of  the  wonders  of  the  time.  Edinburgh 
grew  under  their  sway  from  an  angry  village,  lying  be- 
tween a  fierce  castle  and  a  rich  monastery,  little  distin- 
guished above  its  peers,  less  favored  than  Stirling,  less 


JAMES  V  :    THE  LAST  OF  THE  HEROIC  AGE.      247 

wealthy  than  the  town  of  St.  John,  to  one  of  the  most 
noted  of  cities,  picturesque  and  splendid,  full  of  noble 
houses,  the  center  of  national  life  and  government.  And 
it  is  curious  to  record  that  no  one  of  the  monarchs  who 
brought  it  such  nobility  and  fame  left  any  sadness  of 
death  to  the  associations  of  Edinburgh.  They  lived  and 
were  wedded  and  filled  with  the  brightness  of  their  happier 
moments  the  town  which  afforded  so  beautiful  a  scene  for 
all  rejoicings  :  they  died  on  the  field  of  battle  or  in  other 
places  in  conflict  or  violence  or  despair.  But  Edinburgh 
only  retains  the  brighter  memories,  the  triumphal  pro- 
cessions, the  bridal  finery,  the  jousts  and  the  feasts,  the 
Parliaments  and  proclamations  of  laws  and  high  alliances. 
The  reigns  of  the  Jameses  contain  the  history  of  her  rise, 
her  splendor,  her  climax  of  beauty  and  stateliness,  with- 
out any  association  of  downfall  or  decay. 


PART  HI. 

THE    TIME    OF    THE    PROPHETS. 

CHAPTER  I. 

UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT. 

THERE  is  perhaps  among  the  many  historical  personages 
attached  by  close  association  to  Edinburgh  no  one  so  living, 
so  vigorous,  so  present,  as  the  great  figure  of  the  Eeformer 
and  Prophet  who  once  filled  the  air  with  echoes  of  his 
vehement  and  impassioned  oratory,  who  led  both  Lords 
and  Commons,  and  mated  with  princes  on  more  than  equal 
terms,  the  headstrong,  powerful,  passionate  Preacher, 
who  was  at  once  the  leading  spirit  of  his  time  and  its 
most  vigorous  chronicler.  To  fill  the  circle  of  association,  he 
alone,  of  all  the  animated  groups  who  withstood  or  who  fol- 
lowed him,  has  left  us  not  only  a  number  of  books  which  dis- 
close his  mind  with  all  its  powers  and  imperfections,  but 
the  very  dwelling  in  which  he  passed  at  least  the  latter 
part  of  his  life,  intact  and  authentic,  a  memorial  more  strik- 
ing and  attractive  than  any  "storied  urn  or  animated 
bust."  Nor  are  even  the  associations  of  burial  wanting  ; 
for  though  it  is  no  longer  within  the  solemn  enclosure  of 
a  churchyard,  and  there  is  no  certainty  that  the  stone 
which  is  supposed  to  mark  the  position  of  the  Reformer's 
grave  is  historically  exact,  it  is  yet  sure  enough  that  near 
by,  within  reach  of  the  doors  of  his  ancient  church,  be- 
248 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  249 

neath  the  pavement  trodden  by  so  many  feet,  his  remains 
repose  in  the  center  of  the  life  of  the  Scottish  capital,  a 
position  more  appropriate  than  any  other  that  could  be 
imagined.  Thus  by  life  and  by  death  this  singular  and 
most  evident  and  unmistakable  man,  still  alive  in  every 
lineament,  is  connected  with  the  city  in  which  his  life  was 
passed,  and  in  the  history  of  which  he  can  never  be  for- 
gotten. There  may  be  doubts  about  other  localities,  and 
it  may  be  difficult  to  identify  the  houses  which  have 
been  inhabited  and  the  floors  that  have  been  trod  by  other 
distinguished  personages.  Crowding  footsteps  of  the 
poor  have  obliterated  the  record  in  many  a  noble  house 
abandoned  by  history  ;  even  the  fated  steps  of  the  Queen 
save  in  one  bloodstained  closet  have  left  but  little  authentic 
trace.  But  Knox  is  still  present  with  all  the  force  of  an 
indestructible  individuality — in  the  existing  life  of  the 
country  which  took  so  strong  an  impression  from  him, 
and  in  the  absolutely  personal  facts  of  the  church  in 
which  he  preached,  the  house  in  which  he  lived,  the  stone 
under  which  he  lies. 

To  estimate  the  share  he  had  in  the  foundations  of  that 
modern  Scotland  which  has  so  increased  and  thriven  since 
his  day,  is  perhaps  more  hard  now  than  it  was  even 
eighty  years  ago,  when  his  biography  was  written  by  Dr. 
M'Crie  to  the  great  interest  and  enthusiasm  of  the 
country.  The  laws  of  historical  judgment  are  subject  to 
perpetual  change,  and  the  general  estimate  of  the  great 
personages  of  the  past  has  undergone  various  modifications 
since  that  time.  Perhaps  even  the  Church  is  less  sure  of 
her  share  in  the  record,  less  certain  of  the  doom  once  so 
unhesitatingly  denounced  against  "  the  Paip  that  Pagan 
fu'  of  pride"  ;  less  confident  of  her  own  superiority  to  all 
other  developments  of  Christianity.  The  least  enlight- 
ened are  no  longer  able  to  feel  with  a  good  conscience,  as 
our  best  instructed  fathers  did,  that  an  important  part 


250  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

of  religious  liberty  was  freedom  to  curse  and  pull  down 
every  tenet  other  than  their  own.  No  belief  has  been 
more  obstinate  or  is  more  time-honored  :  but  in  theory  at 
least  it  has  been  much  subdued  in  recent  times,  so  that 
few  of  us  are  able  to  hold  by  our  own  side  with  the  perfect 
confidence  which  once  we  felt.  And  in  these  changing 
views,  and  in  the  impulse  towards  a  greater  catholicity  of 
feeling  which  has  sprung  up  in  Scotland,  the  influence  of 
that  uncompromising  teacher  to  whom  reform  was  every- 
thing, who  had  no  prepossession  in  favor  of  what  was  old 
and  venerable,  but  desired  with  all  the  fervor  of  his  fiery 
soul  to  make  everything  new,  has  doubtless  waned,  save 
to  that  sacred  simplicity  of  ignorance  which  forms  no 
judgment.  But  nothing  can  obliterate  the  person  and 
strenuous  being  of  John  Knox,  or  make  him  a  less  in- 
teresting figure  on  the  crowded  and  tragic  stage  of  that 
epoch  which  he  dominated  and  chronicled.  And  nothing 
can  unlink  the  associations  which  make  him  ever  present 
and  living  in  Edinburgh,  which  was  the  capital  and 
center  of  his  kingdom  as  much  as  of  any  king  who  ever 
breathed. 

John  Knox  was  in  every  sense  of  the  words  a  son  of  the 
soil,  yet  came  of  a  not  unknown  family,  "  kent  folk  "  of 
East  Lothian:  if  not  lairds  of  any  great  heritage,  yet  pos- 
sessing lands  and  living  sufficient  to  entitle  them  to  con- 
sideration. They  were  able  to  give  him  the  best  education 
of  the  time,  which  he  completed  at  the  University  of 
Glasgow  under  the  teaching  of  Major  or  Mair,  the  same 
whom  George  Buchanan  accompanied  to  France  ;  so  that 
both  these  great  men,  as  well  as  various  nobles  and  ec- 
clesiastics of  the  time,  were  his  fellow-students,  trained 
under  the  same  influence.  Whether  Knox  followed  Major 
to  St.  Andrews  as  Buchanan  followed  him  to  Paris  is  not 
known  ;  but  he  would  seem  to  have  lectured  on  philos- 
ophy in  St.  Andrews  at  the  beginning  of  his  career.  It 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  251 

might  be  that  he  was  himself  present,  and  heard  some  of 
the  bold  and  familiar  addresses  of  the  wandering  friars, 
the  first  rude  champions  of  Reform,  whose  protest  against 
the  wickedness  of  the  bishops  and  the  extortions  of  the 
clergy  he  quotes  with  so  much  enjoyment  of  their  rough 
humor,  in  the  beginning  of  his  history  ;  or  even  might 
have  witnessed  the  lighted  pile  and  felt  across  his  face  the 
breath  of  that  "  reek  "  which  carried  spiritual  contagion 
with  it,  as  it  flew  upon  the  keen  breeze  from  the  sea  over 
that  little  center  of  life,  full  of  scholars  and  wits,  and 
keen  cynical  spectators  little  likely  to  be  convinced  by 
any  such  means.  It  is  curious  to  hear  of  Major  for  in- 
stance, one  of  the  Sorbonne,  a  doctor  of  Paris  and  man  of 
the  world,  as  present  at  all  those  proceedings,  listening  to 
Friar  William's  denunciation  of  the  priests,  to  which  he 
gave  his  assent  as  "  a  doctrine  that  might  weill  be  de- 
fended, for  it  contayned  no  heresye" — and  in  very  differ- 
ent circumstances  to  the  sermons  of  Rough,  addressed  to 
the  slayers  of  the  Cardinal,  and  to  the  calling  of  Knox 
himself,  a  crisis  of  popular  emotion  and  vehement  feeling. 
Such  a  man  as  Major,  a  son  of  the  Renaissance,  no  Re- 
former nor  careful  of  any  of  these  things,  must  have  looked 
on  with  strange  feelings  at  all  the  revolutions  accom- 
plished before  him,  the  rude  jests  and  songs,  the  half-joc- 
ular broadly  humorous  assaults,  the  cry  of  heresy,  the  hor- 
ror of  the  burnings,  the  deadly  earnest  of  both  preacher 
and  people  after  Beatoun's  well-deserved  but  terrible  end 
which  cut  all  compromises  short.  One  wonders  what 
thoughts  were  going  on  in  the  mind  of  the  old  scholar  who 
kept  his  place  in  his  stall  as  well  when  mass  was  sung  as 
when  every  trace  of  that  "  idolatrous  sacrifice  "  had  been 
trodden  under  foot.  Would  it  be  more  or  less  the  same  to 
him  whatever  they  preached,  those  wild  religionists,  who 
tore  each  other  in  pieces  ?  did  he  look  on  with  a  secret 
smile  at  the  turmoil  they  made,  as  if  it  mattered  which 


252  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

was  uppermost,  with  a  natural  horror  at  the  fierce  flames 
of  the  human  sacrifice,  yet  consent  in  his  mind  that  if 
they  could  so  stamp  the  heresy  out  which  would  otherwise 
destroy  them,  the  bishops  were  only  logical  to  do  it  ? 
while  on  the  other  side  there  was  not  much  in  point  of 
natural  justice  to  be  said  against  Norman  Leslie  and  his 
men  who  slew  the  Cardinal.  Such  spectators  there  must 
have  been  in  no  small  number,  affording  a  curious  rim 
and  edge  of  observers  to  all  that  the  more  active  and 
violent  might  do  or  say.  But  these  lookers-on  have  said 
nothing  on  the  subject,  or  their  mild  voices  have  been 
lost  in  the  clangor  of  actors  vehement  and  earnest.  It  has 
been  reserved  for  our  age  to  bring  these  dispassionate  or, 
as  we  are  apt  to  think,  cynical  observers  into  the  front 
rank. 

The  first  scene  in  which  John  Knox  comes  prominently 
into  sight  of  the  world  occurs  in  the  midst  of  that  small  but 
urgent  and  much-agitated  society  on  the  fierce  little  head- 
land by  the  sea,  in  the  great  and  noble  cathedral  which  for 
most  of  the  intervening  time  has  been  nothing  but  ruins. 
"We  must  in  imagination  rebuild  these  lofty  walls,  throw  up 
again  the  noble  piers  and  clustered  pillars,  and  see  the 
townsfolk  streaming  in — a  crowd  more  picturesque  in  garb 
than  any  Scots  assembly  nowadays,  with  its  provost  and 
councillors  in  their  municipal  finery :  and  the  grave 
representatives  of  the  colleges  filing  in  to  their  stalls — 
very  grave  now,  we  may  well  believe,  with  many  a  look  at 
the  group  of  gentry,  among  whom  were  half  a  dozen  men 
whose  hands  were  stained  with  the  blood  of  the  Cardinal. 
No  doubt  to  these  spectators,  beyond  even  the  great  volume 
of  sound  which  pealed  upward  from  that  vast  company,  in 
some  popular  hymn  or  ancient  war-cry  of  a  psalm,  the  stir 
of  the  languid  besieging  army  outside,  and  the  guns  of 
the  French  Fleet,  already  on  its  way  to  avenge  Beatoun  and 
crush  this  nest  of  heretics  out,  sounded  ominous  in  the 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  253 

background.  Among  the  congregation  was  a  dark,  vehe- 
ment man,  full  of  repressed  fervor  and  energy,  with  two  or 
three  lads  by  his  side,  of  whom  he  had  charge — strange 
tutor  !  flames  of  zeal  and  earnestness  burning  in  his  deep- 
set  eyes  ;  the  mark  of  the  tonsure  (if  it  was  ever  there, 
which  is  a  doubtful  question)  obliterated  by  long  disuse  ; 
a  man  known  by  the  congregation  as  a  zealous  instructor 
of  youth,  catechizing  his  boys  publicly  of  afternoons  in 
the  cathedral,  vacant  then  of  the  many  services,  the  vespers 
and  benedictions  of  the  superseded  faith. 

Knox's  gifts  and  qualities  were  already  well  known  ;  he 
had  been  a  devoted  friend  and  follower  of  Wishart,  the 
martyr  whose  memory  was  still  fresh  in  the  minds  of  all 
men  ;  and  these  public  examinations  of  the  three  boys,  and 
the  expositions  he  addressed  to  them,  but  which  many  of 
mature  age  also  gathered  to  hear,  had  given  the  many  com- 
petent judges  then  assembled  in  the  beleaguered  city  a  prac- 
tical knowledge  of  his  gifts  and  endowments.  And  .Hough, 
who  filled  the  post  of  preacher  in  St.  Andrews,  was  not 
a  man  of  learning,  aiid  in  consequence  would  seem  to  have 
been  troubled  by  disputatious  members  of  the  priesthood, 
eager,  not  unnaturally,  to  defend  their  own  tenets,  and  with 
all  the  authorities  at  their  fingers'  ends.  In  this  strait 
John  Knox  was  entreated  to  accept  the  charge  of  the  con- 
gregation, but  in  vain.  Perhaps  the  memory  of  Wishart's 
charge  to  him,  "Return  to  your  bairns,"  was  still  in  his 
ears  ;  perhaps  the  reluctance  and  hesitation  of  a  man  who 
felt  himself  incompetent  for  so  great  a  responsibility — 
though  it  is  strange  to  associate  any  idea  of  shrinking  from 
responsibility  with  such  a  dauntless  spirit,  and  he  was  by 
this  time  a  man  of  forty-two,  with  a  matured  mind  and 
some  experience  of  life.  At  all  events  he  "  utterlie  re- 
fused": he  "would  not  run  where  God  had  not  called 
him."  This  being  so,  there  was  no  alternative  but  to  take 
him  by  surprise  and  force  him  into  the  position  which  all 


254  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

desired  him  to  assume.  And  this  was  the  step  which  was 
accordingly  taken  by  the  assembly  of  the  Reformers  in  St. 
Andrews,  an  assembly  in  which  were  many  well-known  and 
distinguished  men,  so  illustrious  a  councilor  as  Sir  David 
Lindsay,  the  poet  and  Lyon-King  of  Scotland,  being  one 
of  the  gentlemen  and  commoners  who  decided  upon  this 
dramatic  and  picturesque  call. 

They  were  all  met  to  the  preaching  upon  a  certain  day, 
the  date  of  which  is  not  given,  but  which  was  presumably 
in  the  summer  of  1547,  Knox  having  arrived  with  his  pupils 
in  St.  Andrews  in  the  Easter  of  that  year.  The  principal 
persons  present  were  aware  of  what  was  coming,  and  prob- 
ably the  mass  of  the  congregation  knew  that  some  event 
more  than  ordinary  was  preparing,  which  would  quicken 
the  eagerness  of  their  attention.  The  sermon  was  upon  the 
right  of  the  congregation  to  the  services  of  "  any  man  in 
whom  they  espied  the  gifts  of  God,"  and  the  risk  on  his 
part  of  refusing  their  call.  Mair,  sitting  by  in  his  doctor's 
gown,  though  he  had  committed  himself  to  no  religious 
heresy,  had  discoursed  much  to  his  students  upon  the  rights 
of  the  people  as  the  son  roe  of  power — a  doctrine,  indeed, 
which  Knox  did  not  hold  in  that  naked  form,  though  most 
probably  he  had  been  influenced  by  these  teachings  towards 
the  still  more  tremendous  form  of  doctrine  which  sets  forth 
the  voice  of  the  Christian  people  as  representing  the  voice 
of  God.  And  no  doubt  up  to  this  point  he  gave  his  adhe- 
sion to  the  words  of  the  preacher.  But  when  Rough  had 
reached  the  crown  of  his  argument  he  suddenly  turned  to 
where  Knox  sat  and  addressed  him  individually,  while  the 
people  held  their  breath. 

"  Brother,"  he  said,  "ye  shall  not  be  offended  albeit 
that  I  speak  unto  you  that  which  I  have  in  charge  even 
from  all  those  that  are  here  present  :  which  is  this.  In 
the  name  of  God  and  of  His  Son  Jesus  Christ,  and  in  the 
name  of  those  that  presently  call  you  by  my  mouth,  I 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  255 

charge  you  that  ye  refuse  not  this  holy  vocation,  but  that 
as  you  tender  the  glory  of  God,  the  increase  of  Christ  His 
kingdom,  the  edification  of  your  brethren,  and  the  comfort 
of  me,  whom  ye  understand  well  enough  to  be  oppressed 
by  the  multitude  of  labors,  that  you  take  upon  you  the 
public  office  and  charge  of  preaching  even  as  ye  look  to 
avoid  God's  heavy  displeasure  and  desire  that  He  shall 
multiply  His  grace  with  you."  And  in  the  end  he  said  to 
those  present,  "  Was  not  this  your  charge  to  me  ?  and  do 
ye  not  approve  this  vocation  ?"  They  answered,  "It 
was,  and  we  approve  it." 

"  Whereat  the  said  John,  abashed,  burst  forth  in  most 
abundant  tears  and  withdrew  himself  to  his  chamber." 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  more  striking  scene.  Any 
sudden  incident  of  an  individual  character  thus  occurring 
in  a  public  assembly  calls  forth  a  thrill  of  interest,  and  gives 
at  once  to  the  most  disconnected  crowd  a  pictorial  unity. 
The  interest  and  excitement  in  those  roused  and  eager 
eyes,  the  crowd  all  turned  towards  the  astonished  subject  of 
this  appeal,  the  soft  young  faces  making  a  little  circle 
round  him,  half  terrified,  half  flattered  by  the  sudden  con- 
sciousness that  all  eyes  were  turned  towards  them,  would 
make  a  fine  theme  for  a  historical  painter.  And  "  the 
said  John,  abashed,"  finding  no  refuge  in  the  great  ex- 
citement and  surprise  of  the  moment,  he  is  so  stern  and  so 
strong,  but  in  tears  !  It  was  thus  that  the  ministry  of  the 
great  Reformer  began. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  follow  in  detail  a  career  so  well, 
known.  Every  particular  of  it,  and  even  the  sermons  with 
all  their  heads,  may  be  found  in  the  Historic  of  the  Re- 
formation in  Scotland,  which  yields  in  interest,  in  pic- 
turesqueness  and  the  most  living  and  graphic  power  of 
narrative,  to  none  of  the  primitive  chronicles.  No  pro- 
fessional word-painter  has  ever  put  a  dramatic  scene,  a 
contention,  a  battle,  such  as  those  which  were  every  day 


256  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

occurrences  in  Scotland  at  that  time,  upon  paper  with 
more  pictorial  force,  or  with  half  the  fervor  of  life  and 
reality.  The  writer  goes  through  all  the  gamut  of  popular 
passion.  He  exults  sometimes  fiercely,  laughs  sometimes 
coarsely,  throws  in  "  a  merry  jest,"  which  is  often  grim 
with  savage  humor ;  but  throughout  all  is  always  real, 
always  genuine,  writing  not  impartially,  but  with  the 
strong  conviction  and  sentiment  of  a  man  elucidating 

o  o 

matters  in  which  he  has  been  himself  a  prominent  actor. 
The  arguments  of  his  adversaries  when  he  enters  upon  a 
public  controversy  are  unaccountably  feeble,  which  perhaps 
may  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  friars  were  not  much 
accustomed  to  controversy,  perhaps  by  the  natural  bias  of 
a  controversialist  to  lessen  the  force  of  his  antagonists'  argu- 
ments ;  and  he  does  not  pretend  to  contemplate  his  adver- 
saries, either  spiritual  or  political,  with  any  tolerance,  or 
permit  any  possibility  that  they  too  might  perhaps  mean 
well  and  have  a  righteous  intention,  even  though  it  was 
entirely  opposed  to  that  of  John  Knox  :  such  ideas  had 
no  currency  in  his  day.  That  Mary  of  Guise  might  really 
mean  and  wish  to  avoid  bloodshed,  to  strike  no  blow  that 
was  not  inevitable,  to  keep  the  breach  from  being  widened 
by  actual  civil  war  ;  and  that  the  policy  of  temporizing  as 
long  as  that  was  possible  was  anything  but  wicked  wiles 
and  intentions  of  betrayal,  was  an  idea  which  he  would 
seem  to  have  been  incapable  of  conceiving.  This  is  a 
drawback  perhaps  common  to  every  struggle  so  important 
and  fundamental  as  was  the  strife  which  began  to  rage  in 
Scotland.  Had  we  a  history  compiled  by  the  spectators  to 
whom  we  have  referred  it  would  probably,  unless  nature 
gave  them  an  exceptional  keenness  of  vision,  be  wanting 
in  those  qualities  of  animation  and  force  which  he  who  is 
confident  of  having  every  good  influence  on  his  side,  and 
nothing  but  the  powers  of  evil  against  him,  is  likely  to 
possess.  Major  indeed  was  a  historian,  but  he  did  not 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  257 

meddle  with  the  history  of  his  own  time  ;  and  Buchanan, 
while  separated  from  the  reader  by  the  bonds  and  cere- 
ments of  his  Latin,  and  therefore  shut  out  from  a  popular 
audience,  is  as  great  a  partisan  as  Knox. 

The  little  garrison  of  St.  Andrews  was  taken,  as  every- 
body knows,  by  the  French,  and  carried  away  to  prison 
and  the  galleys  ;  but  no  blood  was  shed  to  avenge  the 
blood  of  Beatoun,  a  point  which  ought  to  be  put  to  their 
credit.  John  Knox  suffered  all  these  misfortunes  with  a 
steadfast  soul,  still  declaring  to  all  who  surrounded  him, 
in  the  extremity  of  suffering,  hardship,  and  sickness,  that 
he  should  again  preach  in  that  Church  of  St.  Andrews 
from  which  he  had  been  taken.  This  is  the  first  of  the 
many  prophecies  completely  verified  afterwards  with  which 
he  is  credited.  He  escaped  after  about  three  years  of 
captivity  and  misery  in  France,  during  which  he  would 
seem  to  have  been  actually  employed  in  the  galleys,  and 
came  to  England,  where  it  is  to  be  supposed  the  story  of 
his  influence  and  power  with  the  Scotch  Eeformers  had 
preceded  him,  otherwise  the  advancement  to  which  he 
reached,  and  which  might  have  been  greater  but  for  his 
dissatisfaction  with  the  imperfectly  Reformed  Church 
there,  and  the  bondage  of  ceremonials  and  traditions  still 
left  in  it,  would  have  been  still  more  extraordinary.  He 
was  one  of  the  chaplains  to  the  boy-king  Edward,  for 
whom  he  had  the  amiable  prejudice  common  to  those  who 
secure  the  favor  of  very  young  princes,  expecting  from  him 
everything  that  was  great  and  good.  At  the  death  of  the 
young  King,  however,  Knox  removed  hurriedly  to  the 
Continent  with  many  others,  knowing  that  under  the  reign 
of  Mary  there  would  be  little  acceptance  for  men  of  his 
views.  During  his  stay  in  England  he  had  met  with  a 
pair  of  ladies  who  were  henceforward  to  be  very  closely  con- 
nected with  his  life — Marjory  Bowes,  his  future  wife,  and 
to  all  appearance  still  more  important  her  mother,  Mrs. 


258  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

Bowes,  to  whom,  contrary  to  the  ordinary  idea  of  that 
relationship,  he  seems  to  have  given  much  regard  and 
affection,  notwithstanding  that  she  was  a  melancholy 
woman,  depressed  and  despondent,  sometimes  overwhelmed 
with  religious  terrors,  and  requiring  continued  support 
and  encouragement  in  the  faith.  One  cannot  help  feel- 
ing a  sort  of  compassion  for  the  silent  Marjory,  of  whom 
nothing  is  ever  heard,  between  her  solemn  lover  of  fifty 
and  her  sad  mother.  But  she  is  voiceless,  and  though 
there  are  letters  of  religious  counsel  addressed  to  her 
under  the  title  of  "  weill  belovit  sister/'  there  is  not  among 
them  all,  so  strange  is  the  abstract  effect  of  religious 
exhortation  thus  applied,  one  gleam  of  anything  like 
individual  character,  or  which  can  throw  any  light  upon 
what  she  was  ;  which,  considering  the  marked  individuality 
of  the  writer,  is  curious  exceedingly.  We  must  hope  that 
on  other  occasions,  notwithstanding  his  mature  years, 
there  were  letters  calculated  to  give  more  satisfaction  to  a 
young  woman  than  these  expositions  and  addresses. 

For  the  next  two  years  Knox,  now  it  is  evident  univers- 
ally known  wherever  the  Eeformation  had  penetrated, 
filled  the  place  of  minister  to  a  congregation  of  exiles  as- 
sembled at  Geneva,  most  of  them  refugees  from  England, 
who  had  fled,  as  he  himself  had  done,  at  the  accession  of 
Mary.  But  his  heart  was  in  his  own  land,  where  in  the 
meantime  the  progress  of  the  new  Eeformed  faith  was 
arrested,  and  silence  and  discouragement  had  fallen  over 
the  country.  The  leaders  were  dispersed  or  destroyed, 
the  preachers  silenced,  and  there  was  no  one  to  gather  to- 
gether the  many  groups  of  believers  all  over  the  country 
in  whose  hearts  the  seed  had  sprung  up  strongly,  but  who 
as  yet  had  made  no  public  profession.  In  1555  Knox 
suddenly  reappeared  in  Scotland,  brought  thither  at  once 
by  urgent  letters  and  by  the  eagerness  of  his  own  heart. 
"\Vlion  he  arrived  in  Edinburgh  he  found  tnat  many  who 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  359 

"  had  a  zeal  to  godliness  "  still  attended  mass,  probably 
finding  it  more  difficult  to  break  the  continual  habit  of 
their  lives  than  the  bonds  of  doctrine — and  that  the  outer 
structure  of  the  Church  remained  much  as  it  had  been, 
without  any  such  shattering  and  falling  asunder  as  had 
taken  place  in  regions  more  advanced.  That  this  arose 
from  no  want  of  zeal  was  proved  as  soon  as  the  preacher 
appeared  :  for  his  arrival  was  no  sooner  known  than  the 
house  in  which  he  had  alighted  from  his  journey  was  filled 
by  a  stream  of  inquirers,  whom  he  "  began  to  exhort 
secretly."  One  night  he  was  called  to  supper  with  the 
Laird  of  Dun,  the  well-known  John  Erskine,  who  wras  one 
of  the  most  earnest  of  the  Reforming  party,  and  in  the 
grave  company  he  found  there — among  whom  were  one  or 
two  ministers  and  the  young  but  already  promising  and 
eminent  William  Maitland  of  Lethington- — the  question 
was  fully  discussed,  Was  it  lawful  to  conform  while  hold- 
ing a  faith  not  only  different  but  hostile  ?  was  it  permissible 
to  bow  down  in  the  house  of  Rimmon  ?  To  this  Knox 
answered  No,  with  all  the  uncompromising  and  stern  sin- 
cerity of  his  soul.  "Nowise  was  it  lawful."  The  question 
was  very  fully  defended  from  the  other  point  of  view. 
"  Nothing  was  omitted  that  might  make  for  the  tem- 
porizer "  ;  even  the  example  of  Paul,  who  went  up  into 
the  Temple  to  pay  his  vow  by  the  advice  of  the  Apostle 
James,  which  step,  however,  Knox  pronounced  at  once, 
notwithstanding  his  absolute  reverence  for  Holy  Writ,  to 
have  been  wrong,  and  not  of  God — a  mistake  of  both  the 
Apostles,  and  manifestly  bringing  no  blessing  with  it. 
His  bold  and  assured  argument  cut  the  ground  from  under 
the  feet  of  the  hesitating  Reformers,  to  whom  no  doubt  it 
was  very  difficult  thus  to  break  away  from  all  the  tradi- 
tions of  their  lives. 

This  scene  throws  a  strange  and  in  some  respects  new 
light  upon  the  more  human  side  of  the  great  movement. 


260  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

It  is  easier  perhaps  to  us  who  are  acquainted  with  all  that 
followed  to  understand  the  fiery  zeal  which  flamed  against 
every  accessory  of  what  they  conceived  to  be  idolatry — the 
saintly  image,  which  was  nothing  but  a  painted  board,  and 
the  "round  clipped  god"  upon  the  altar  which  was  blas- 
phemously asserted  to  be  the  very  Lord  Himself — than  to 
remember  that  these  men  had  also  many  links  of  use  and 
wont,  of  attachment  and  habit,  to  the  churches  in  which 
they  had  been  christened,  and  the  position,  with  all  its 
needs  and  simple  duties,  to  which  they  had  been  born.  To 
see  them  standing  there  for  a  moment  reluctant,  with  the 
tremendous  breach  that  must  be  made  in  life  gaping  before 
them,  and  the  sense  of  universal  disruption  and  tearing 
asunder  which  must  follow,  is  to  me  more  touching  than 
the  stern  conviction  which  never  pauses  nor  fears.  They 
were  so  thoroughly  convinced,  however,  of  the  necessity 
which  he  reasoned  out  with  such  remorseless  logic,  that 
Erskin  first,  and  after  him  many  gentlemen  through 
Scotland,  craved  the  help  of  the  preacher  to  put  the  crown 
upon  their  convictions,  and  spread  in  their  halls  and  private 
chambers,  no  church  being  attainable,  what  was  now  for 
the  first  time  called  the  Table  of  the  Lord.  Knox  went 
to  Dun  in  Forfarshire  across  the  great  firths  of  Forth  and 
Tay,  and  to  Calder,  the  house  of  Sir  James  Sandilands, 
afterwards  Lord  Torphichen,  in  Lothian,  where  many 
gathered  to  hear  him.  But  it  would  seem  to  have  been  in 
the  West,  always  the  most  strenuous  in  doctrine,  that  he 
first  celebrated  the  new  rite,  the  holy  feast  as  yet  unknown 
in  Scotland.  During  the  eventful  winter  of  1555-56  he 
pervaded  the  country  thus,  setting  forth  the  special  bond 
of  evangelical  religion,  uniting  those  different  groups  by 
the  sacred  seal  of  the  bread  and  wine — who  can  doubt  re- 
ceived with  a  profound  and  tremulous  awe  by  lips  to  which 
the  wafer  had  been  hitherto  the  only  symbol  of  that  act  of 
closest  communion  ? 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  261 

This  would  seem  to  have  been  the  chief  work  of  Knox 
during  the  visit  which,  in  the  midst  of  his  Geneva  min- 
istry, he  paid  to  his  native  laud  ;  and  it  is  easy  to  perceive 
that  it  was  of  supreme  importance  as  identifying  and  sep- 
arating the  converts  into  a  definite  community,  bound  to- 
gether by  that  sacrament  of  fealty,  an  oath  more  binding 
than  any  expressed  only  in  words.  Hitherto  the  preaching 
and  teaching  of  the  Word,  which  was  itself  a  discovery, 
and  came  with  all  the  freshness  of  a  new  revelation,  had 
been  the  only  sacred  office  carried  on  by  the  Reformers. 
The  Sacraments  were  all  in  the  hands  of  ecclesiastics,  who 
had  been  for  generations  past  losing  the  confidence  and 
respect  of  the  nation — though  one  cannot  but  believe  there 
must  still  have  been  here  and  there  a  humble  curate,  a 
parish  priest  like  Chaucer's  Parsoune,  to  strengthen  the 
hold  of  the  accustomed  ordinances  upon  men's  minds,  who 
however  strongly  they  might  turn  against  the  miracle  of 
transubstantiation,  could  not  cast  aside  the  only  means  of 
partaking  in  the  great  mystery  of  the  body  and  blood  of 
Christ.  To  all  such  here  was  now  the  answer  set  forth, 
and  the  hope — the  holy  Table,  the  communion  of  saints, 
the  bread  and  wine  of  the  great  and  ceaseless  commemora- 
tion. It  would  be  doing  the  greatest  wrong  to  these 
small  devout  assemblies,  and  to  the  fervent  preacher, 
devoured  with  eagerness  to  make  them  all,  not  almost 
but  altogether  such  men  as  himself,  to  call  this  an 
act  of  policy.  Yet  that  it  was  so,  and  that  a  bond  was 
thus  established  to  consolidate  the  party,  more  sacred, 
more  binding  than  any  other,  there  can  be  no  reasonable 
doubt. 

While  traveling  on  this  solemn  mission  from  place  to 
place  and  house  to  house  of  the  religions  gentry  of  Scot- 
land, Knox  would  seem  to  have  made  Edinburgh  his 
headquarters,  and  preached  there  from  time  to  time,  not 
always  secretly.  He  had  here  ' '  a  greater  audience  than  ever 


262  KOYAL  EDINBURGH. 

before  "in  "  the  Bishop  of  Dunkeld's  great  lodging,"  that 
ancient  habitation  from  which  Gawin  Douglas,  the  poet- 
bishop,  had  watched  and  waited  while  the  fight  went  on 
within  the  gates  of  the  Nether  Bow,  and  from  which  he 
rushed  out  to  rescue  the  other  prelate  whose  corslet  rang 
under  his  rochet.  Strange  association,  yet  not  inappro- 
priate ;  for  the  mild  Bishop  of  Dunkeld  had  also  found 
many  potent  words  to  say  against  the  abuses  of  the  Church, 
though  the  new  presbyter  who  now  took  his  place  was 
rather  of  Beatoun's  warlike  mettle  than  of  Douglas's.  The 
nobles  who  came  thither  to  hear  the  preacher  were  so 
"  weill  contented  "  with  his  doctrine — which  is  his  own 
moderate  version  of  what  was  no  doubt  an  enthusiasm  of 
grave  approbation — that  they  seem  to  have  imagined,  in 
that  solemn  simplicity  which  belongs  to  fresh  conviction, 
that  he  might  perchance,  could  she  but  hear  him,  move 
the  Regent  Queen  herself,  Mary  of  Guise,  an  unlikely 
convert  no  doubt.  He  was  accordingly  exhorted  by  three 
gentlemen,  specified  as  the  Earl  of  Glencairn,  the  Earl 
Marischal,  and  Harye  Drummond,  to  write  a  letter  to  the 
Queen,  which  Knox,  always  eager  for  the  pen,  and  full  of 
matter  boiling  to  have  utterance,  immediately  did.  It  is 
difficult  not  to  think  otthesancta  simplicitas  which  rarely 
belongs  to  such  a  group  of  men,  when  we  think  of  the 
grave  trio  of  advisers,  and  the  still  grave  but  fiery  prophet- 
preacher,  making  this  wonderful  appeal.  It  was  less 
wonderful  in  him  who  loved  nothing  so  much  as  to  write 
when  he  could  not  be  preaching,  to  set  forth  those  high- 
handed arraignments  before  the  visionary  tribunal  of  the 
one  true  and  only  faith,  of  whomsoever  he  could  address, 
queen  or  peasant  ;  but  it  is  strange  that  men  of  the  world, 
and  of  the  society  of  their  time,  should  have  thus  thought 
it  possible  to  convert  a  lady  so  full  of  policy  and  cares  of 
government,  so  entirely  occupied  with  the  most  important 
matters  of  statesmanship,  not  to  say  so  determined  a 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  203 

Catholic,  as  the  daughter  of  the  Guises,  the  sister  of  the 
Cardinal. 

The  attempt,  as  was  natural,  failed  completely. 
"Which  letter,"  resumes  Knox,  "when  she  had  read 
within  a  day  or  two  she  delivered  it  to  the  proud  prelate, 
Beatoun,  Bishop  of  Glasgow,  and  said  in  mockage,  '  Please 
you,  my  lord,  to  read  a  pasquill  ?  "  It  is  against  the 
perfection  of  the  prophet,  but  not  the  character  of  the 
man,  that  this  scorn  stung  him  as  no  persecution  could 
have  done.  He  made  certain  additions  to  the  letter,  and 
published  it  in  Geneva  on  his  return  there.  We  are  not 
told  which  part  of  the  letter  these  additions  are,  but  what 
he  tells  us  seems  to  indicate  that  the  threatening  prophe- 
sies, of  which  he  says  in  his  Historic,  "  lett  those  very 
flatterers  see  what  hath  failed,"  had  been  added  to  the 
original  text.  We  forgive  him  his  ready  wrath,  and  even 
the  "  threatenings"  which  he  always  considered  himself 
at  liberty  to  launch  at  those  who,  in  his  own  language, 
"withstood  the  truth":  but  we  could  have  wished  that 
Knox  had  been  more  magnanimous,  and  could  have  for- 
gotten the  offense  after  the  passage  of  years.  Mary's  care- 
less speech  would  have  been  but  "  ane  merry  boord  "  had 
it  been  directed  against  one  of  his  enemies. 

When  Knox  went  back  to  Geneva  after  this  winter's 
work  to  resume  his  pastorate  there,  he  left  the  growing 
cause  of  Reform  in  Scotland  with  a  constitution  and  or- 
ganization sanctified  by  the  most  sacred  rites  of  religion, 
an  advantage  quite  inestimable  in  the  circumstances,  and 
placing  the  cause  as  in  an  ark  of  safety.  And  when  he 
returned  to  Edinburgh  two  years  later,  the  scattered 
groups  to  whom  in  country  houses  and  castles  he  had  ad- 
ministered the  Lord's  Supper  had  become  the  Congrega- 
tion, an  army  existing  in  all  quarters  of  Scotland,  ready 
to  rally  to  the  aid  of  any  portion  of  the  body,  or  eminent 
individual,  who  might  be  attacked  :  and  headed  by  a 


264  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

phalanx  of  Scots  nobility,  Lords  of  the  Congregation,  the 
heads  of  a  new  party  in  the  State,  as  well  as  of  a  new 
Church,  an  altogether  novel  development  of  national  life. 
It  would  have  been  difficult  to  have  spoken  more  boldly 
than  Knox  had  done  in  his  letter  to  the  Queen  Regent 
three  years  before,  but  the  Congregation  in  its  established 
position  as  a  national  party  took  stronger  ground,  and 
pressed  their  claims  to  a  hearing  with  a  force  of  petitioners 
too  strong  to  be  gainsaid.  Knox  had  called  upon  Mary 
herself  in  her  own  person  to  hear  the  Word  and  abjure  her 
errors,  but  the  body  of  Reformers  asked  for  measures  more 
comprehensive  and  still  more  subversive  of  the  established 
order  of  things.  In  their  first  address  to  Mary  they  up- 
braided themselves,  with  a  manly  penitence  which  must 
have  been  bewildering  to  royal  ears,  that  they  had  per- 
mitted their  brethren  in  the  faith  to  be  destroyed  by 
"fagot  fyre  and  sword "  without  resistance.  "We  ac- 
knowledge it,"  said  these  strange  petitioners,  "  to  have 
been  our  bounden  duty  before  God  either  to  have  defended 
our  brethren  from  those  cruel  murtherers  (seeing  we  are 
a  part  of  that  power  which  God  hath  established  in  this 
realm)  or  else  to  have  given  open  testification  of  our  faith 
with  them."  This,  however,  being  no  longer  in  their 
power,  they  besought  the  Queen  to  make  such  horrible 
accidents  impossible  in  the  future,  and  to  grant  to  them 
permission  to  establish  their  worship  ;  to  meet  publicly 
or  privately  to  make  their  common  prayer,  and  read  the 
Scriptures  in  the  vulgar  tongue  ;  to  have  the  assistance 
of  "  qualified  persons  in  knowledge  "  to  expound  to  them 
"any  hard  places  of  Scripture,"  and  to  have  the  Sacra- 
ments administered  "  in  the  vulgar  tongue,"  and  the 
Lord's  Supper  in  both  kinds.  Last  of  all  they  desired  of 
the  Queen  that  "the  wicked,  scandalous,  and  detestable 
life  of  prelates  and  of  the  State  Ecclesiastical "  should  be 
reformed,  stating  at  the  same  time  their  wish  to  have  the 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT,  265 

case  between  themselves  and  the  priests  tried  not  only  by 
the  rules  of  the  New  Testament,  but  by  the  writings  of 
the  ancient  Fathers.  In  all  this  there  was  no  intolerance, 
but  a  wholly  just  and  reasonable  prayer,  suggesting  harm 
to  no  one,  not  even  the  persecutors  from  whom  they  had 
suffered ;  altogether  a  claim  of  justice  and  native  right 
magnanimously  as  well  as  forcibly  made,  with  dignified 
recollection  of  their  own  position  as  "  a  part  of  that  power 
which  God  hath  established  in  this  realm/'  to  which  it 
would  have  been  difficult  for  any  reasonable  sovereign  to 
return  a  discourteous  or  imperious  answer. 

Mary  of  Guise  did  no  such  thing,  She  did  not  receive 
the  address  of  the  Congregation  as  she  had  done  the  letter 
of  Knox.  But  she  did  what  was  worse,  she  gave  no  an- 
swer at  all  save  fair  words  and  delay.  It  would  have  been 
perhaps  too  much  to  expect  that  even  those  moderate  and 
manly  petitioners  should  have  taken  into  consideration 
the  complicated  circumstances  by  which  she  was  sur- 
rounded, or  the  difficulties  of  her  position,  with  the 
"  State  Ecclesiastical  "  so  strong  and  wealthy,  arbiters  for 
the  moment  of  her  faith,  and  France  and  her  kindred  ex- 
pectant of  impossible  things  from  her,  and  Rome  itself  re- 
garding with  a  watchful  eye  what  a  Princess  of  so  Catholic 
a  family — defender  of  the  faith  in  a  distant  but  at  this 
moment  exceedingly  important  field — should  do.  Mary 
temporized,  which  was  perhaps  the  best  thing  possible  for 
the  Reformers  if  not  for  herself,  and  promised  to  take 
order,  to  regulate  matters  for  their  advantage  as  soon  as 
it  was  possible,  when  she  should  have  concluded  various 
matters  of  more  importance  that  were  in  hand,  such,  for 
instance,  as  that  of  awarding  the  crown  matrimonial  to 
her  daughter's  husband  the  young  King  of  France,  to 
whom  all  earthly  distinctions  were  soon  to  matter  so  little. 
During  this  period  of  delay  the  Reformers  were  left  un- 
molested to  multiply  and  mature,  so  that  when  her  other 


266  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

business  was  despatched,  and  the  Queen  could  no  longer 
avoid  some  action  in  the  matter,  the  Congregation  had 
attained  both  numbers  and  power.  When  the  preachers 
were  summoned  to  appear  before  her  to  plead  their  own 
cause  "it  was  concluded  by  the  whole  brethren  that  the 
gentlemen  of  every  county  should  accompany  their 
preachers  to  the  day  and  place  appointed."  This  \va.s  a 
proceeding  entirely  sanctioned  by  Scotch  custom,  of  which 
there  were  many  historical  examples,  but  it  was  not  per- 
haps calculated  to  promote  the  ends  of  peaceful  discussion  ; 
for  the  gentlemen  thus  described  were  accompanied  by 
their  households  at  least,  if  not  by  a  stout  following  of 
retainers,  and  the  result  was  the  assemblage  of  "such  a 
multitude  "  that  even  the  leaders  considered  it  likely  to 
have  "given  fear"  to  the  Queen,  although  this  multitude 
was,  as  the  record  says,  with  a  gleam  of  grim  humor, 
"without  armor  as  peciable  men,  minding  only  to  give 
confession  with  their  preachers."  Mary  wisely  interposed 
another  period  of  delay  when  she  was  warned  what  the 
"  peaceable  "  escort  was  with  which  the  preachers  were 
obeying  her  call. 

It  was,  however,  as  little  safe  to  let  loose  such  an  army 
of  confessors  through  the  country  which  had  to  be  trav- 
ersed before  they  could  reach  their  homes,  as  to  receive 
them  in  Stirling  where  the  appointment  had  been.  For, 
mild  as  was  their  purpose  and  godly  their  intentions,  it 
proved  too  much  for  the  sense  and  moderation  even  of 
that  religious  crowd  when  they  found  themselves  on  their 
way  northward  masters  of  St.  Johnstone  (or  Perth,  as 
moderns  call  it)  with  the  fumes  of  a  sermon  of  Knox's 
still  in  their  brain,  and  a  report  about  that  the  Queen 
meant  to  put  the  preachers  "  to  the  horn,"  for  all  so  softly 
spoken  as  she  was.  Knox's  sermon  had  been  "  vehement 
against  idolatrie,"  though  preached  in  a  church  still 
wealthy  and  bright  with  all  the  adornments  of  the  ancient 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  267 

faith,  and  in  which,  as  the  crowd  dispersed,  a  priest  ap- 
peared in  his  vestments  to  say  his  mass.  It  gives  us  a 
curious  impression  of  the  chaos  that  reigned,  to  hear  that 
in  the  town,  which  was  full  to  overflowing  of  this  Prot- 
estant crowd,  and  in  the  very  church  which  still  rang 
with  the  echoes  of  Knox's  vehement  oratory,  he  who  had 
no  words  strong  enough  to  denounce  that  idolatrous  rite 
— there  should  come  forth  in  the  calm  of  use  and  wont  a 
nameless  humble  priest  with  his  acolyte  to  say  the  mass, 
which  was  his  bounden  duty  whatever  obstacles  might  be 
in  his  way.  The  manner  in  which  it  is  recorded,  with  the 
violent  antagonism  of  the  time,  is  this — "  That  a  priest  in 
contempt  would  go  to  the  masse  :  and  to  declare  his 
malignant  presumption  he  would  open  up  ane  glorious 
tabernacle  which  stood  upon  the  Hie  altar."  On  the  other 
side  no  doubt  the  tale  would  be,  that  with  the  faith  and 
courage  of  a  holy  martyr  this  venerable  confessor  ascended 
the  steps  of  the  altar  to  give  his  life,  if  needful,  for  the 
holy  mysteries,  and  fulfil  his  sacred  office  whoever  might 
oppose.  And  which  was  the  more  true  version  who  can 
tell  ?  On  neither  side  would  it  be  believed,  what  was 
probably  the  fact,  that  it  was  a  simple  brother  taking  little 
thought  of  the  commotions  round  him,  Avho,  as  soon  as  the 
clamor  of  the  preaching  was  over,  concerned  with  nothing 
but  his  mass  which  had  to  be  said  during  canonical  hours, 
had  come  in  without  other  intention  to  perform  his  daily 
duty. 

But  in  any  case,  the  sight  of  the  glorious  tabernacle 
filled  with  a  fury  of  excitement  the  dregs  of  the  crowd 
who  still  lingered  there.  A  child's  outcry,  more  "  mala- 
pert "  than  the  priest,  called  the  attention  of  the  lin- 
gerers, and  before  any  one  knew,  the  passion  of  destruc- 
tion had  seized  like  a  frenzy  upon  the  people.  They 
flung  themselves  upon  the  "glorious  tabernacle,"  and  all 
the  statues  and  adornments,  and  laid  them  in  swift  and 


268  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

sudden  rain.  The  rumor  flew  through  the  town,  along 
with  the  shouts  and  crash  of  metal  and  stone ;  and  the 
remainder  of  the  lately-dispersed  multitude  came  rush- 
ing back  to  the  church  which  was  the  scene  of  the  out- 
break, a  mob  ''not  of  the  gentlemen,  neither  of  them 
that  were  earnest  professors,  but  of  the  rasckall  multi- 
tude," which  finding  nothing  to  do  in  the  stripped  walls 
and  chapels,  hurried  on,  led,  no  doubt,  by  the  first  of 
the  iconoclasts,  who  had  become  intoxicated  with  the 
frenzy  of  destruction,  to  the  convents  of  the  Gray  and 
the  Black  Friars.  Their  violence  grew  as  they  passed 
on,  from  one  scene  of  destruction  to  another,  many  of 
them  finding  substantial  inducements  in  the  shape  of 
booty,  in  the  well-filled  meal-girnels  and  puncheons  of 
salt  beef  in  the  larders  of  the  monks.  By  the  time  they 
came  to  these  it  may  be  presumed  that  the  special  rage 
against  idolatry  had  been  assuaged  ;  but  the  demon  of 
destruction  had  taken  its  place.  And  when  the  excited 
multitude  reached  the  noble  Charterhouse  with  all  its  pic- 
turesque buildings,  "  the  fairest  abbaye  and  best  biggit  of 
any  within  the  realm  of  Scotland,"  surrounded  by  pleas- 
ant gardens  and  noble  trees,  every  restraint  was  thrown 
aside.  It  had  been  founded  by  James  I,  and  there  lay 
the  remains  of  his  murdered  body  along  with  those  of 
many  other  royal  victims  of  the  stormy  and  tumultuous 
past.  So  much  conscience  was  left  that  the  terrified 
monks,  or  at  least  the  Prior  who  is  specially  mentioned, 
was  allowed  to  take  away,  with  him  as  much  silver  and 
gold  as  he  was  able  to  carry.  The  rest  was  beaten  down 
into  indiscriminating  ruin,  and  "  within  two  days  these 
three  great  places,  monuments  of  idolatrie,  to  wit  the 
Gray  and  Black  thieves  and  Charterhouse  monks  (a 
building  of  a  wondrous  cost  and  greatness),  were  so  des- 
troyed that  the  walls  only  did  remain  of  all  these  great 
edifications," 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  269 

That  this  was  in  no  way  the  doing  of  Knox  and  his 
colleagues  is  evident  :  but  it  is  equally  evident  that  they 
treated  it  as  a  mere  accident  and  outrage  of  the  mob 
without  consequence  so  far  as  the  greater  question  was 
concerned.  When  the  Queen,  exasperated,  threatened 
in  her  anger  on  the  receipt  of  the  news  to  destroy  St. 
Johnstone,  and  began  to  collect  an  army  to  inarch  upon 
the  offenders,  the  Congregation  assembled  in  Perth  pro- 
fessed astonishment  and  incredulity,  treating  her  threats 
as  the  mere  utterances  of  passion,  and  thinking  "  such 
cruelty  "  impossible.  There  is  not  a  word  in  the  letters 
to  the  Queen's  Majestie,  to  the  Nobilitie  of  Scotland,  and 
the  fierce  address  to  the  priests  in  which  they  afterwards 
stated  their  case,  of  any  wrong  on  their  own  side  or  prov- 
ocation given.  The  Congregation  takes  at  once  the  high- 
est tone.  They  declare  that,  faithful  servants  of  the  realm 
as  they  have  always  been,  if  this  unjust  tyranny  is  car- 
ried out  they  will  be  constrained  to  take  up  the  sword  of 
just  defense,  notifying  at  the  same  time  their  innocence 
not  only  to  "  the  King  of  France,  to  our  Mistress  and  to 
her  husband,  but  also  to  the  Princes  and  Council  of  everie 
Christian  realm,  declaring  unto  them  that  this  cruel,  un- 
just, and  most  tyrannical  murther  intended  against  towns 
and  multitudes,  was  and  is  the  only  cause  of  our  revolt  from 
our  accustomed  obedience."  Thus  they  treat  the  threat- 
ened attack  throughout  as  wholly  directed  against  their  re- 
ligion and  religious  freedom,  without  the  least  reference  to 
the  just  cause  of  offense  given  by  riots  so  alarming  and  de- 
structive, and  by  the  ruin  of  a  national  monument  so  im- 
portant as  the  Charterhouse.  All  these  are  as  completely 
ignored  as  if  the  population  of  St.  Johnstone  had  been, 
the  most  tranquil  and  law-abiding  in  the  world.  And 
they  do  this  with  such  evident  good  faith  that  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  believe  that  what  had  happened  was  to 
themselves  an  unimportant  incident  :  thought  it  was  some- 


270  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

thing  like  what  the  destruction  of  Westminster  Abbey 
would  have  been  in  England.  In  these  respects,  however, 
the  state  of  feeling  produced  by  the  Reformation  followed 
no  ordinary  laws  ;  the  fervor  of  hatred  and  contempt  which 
the  priesthood  called  forth  in  Scotland  being  beyond  all 
example  or  comparison,  except,  indeed,  in  some  parts  of 
France,  where  Farel  and  his  followers  had  set  the  example 
of  destruction. 

The  Queen,  however,  did  little  more  than  threaten. 
Before  she  could  move  at  all,  the  Westlaud  lords,  who 
had  gone  home,  had  heard  the  news  and  turned  back  in 
hot  haste  to  succor  their  brethren.  Even  without  that 
reinforcement  the  French  general  had  hesitated  to  ap- 
proach too  near  the  town  occupied  by  so  many  resolute 
men,  no  longer  "peaceable,"  but  determined  to  defend 
themselves.  It  is  very  apparent  that  Mary  wished  above 
all  things  to  avoid  bloodshed  and  any  step  which  would 
precipitate  the  beginning  of  a  civil  war  :  and  she  sent 
embassy  after  embassy,  selected  sometimes  from  her  own 
side,  sometimes  from  that  of  the  Reformers,  to  exhort 
them  to  submission.  If  her  part  in  the  matter  was  that 
of  an  anxious  and  in  many  ways  considerate  ruler,  bent, 
so  far  as  in  her  lay,  upon  keeping  the  peace,  the  attitude 
of  the  Congregation  Avas,  at  the  same  time,  a  perfectly 
manly  and  moderate  one,  granting  their  dulness  of  con- 
science in  respect  to  the  real  outrage.  "  If  the  Queen's 
grace  would  suffer  the  religion  then  begun  to  proceed, 
and  not  trouble  their  brethren  and  sisters  that  had  pro- 
fessed Christ  Jesus  with  them,"  they  declared  themselves 
ready  to  submit  in  any  way  to  the  Queen's  commandment ; 
but  without  this  promise  they  would  not  stir.  Knox  him- 
self, however,  who  was  the  soul  of  the  party,  was,  accord- 
ing to  his  wont,  less  self-controlled.  He  considered  it 
his  duty  to  make  a  special  statement  to  Argyle  and  the 
Lord  James,  the  future  Earl  of  Murray,  who  were  i\\a 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  271 

Queen's  first  envoys,  and  to  send  a  message  to  the  Eegent  in 
his  own  name,  with  a  curious  assumption  of  the  prophet's 
office,  which  is  exceedingly  remarkable  so  near  the  be- 
ginning of  his  career,  and  is  at  once  an  evidence  of  the 
enormous  influence  which  he  had  acquired,  and  of  the 
astonishing  confidence  in  his  own  mission  and  powers 
which  must  have  helped  him  to  acquire  it.  "  Say  to  the 
Queen's  Grace  Eegent,"  he  required  them,  "in  my  name, 
that  we  whom  she  in  her  blind  rage  doth  persecute  are 
God's  servants,  faithful  and  obedient  subjects  to  the 
authority  of  this  realm  :  that  that  religion  which  she  pre- 
tendeth  to  maintain  by  fire  and  sword  is  not  the  religion 
of  Christ  Jesus,  but  is  express  contrarie  to  the  same,  ane 
superstition  devised  by  the  brain  of  man  :  which  I  offer 
myself  to  prove  against  all  that  within  Scotland  will  main- 
tain the  contrarie — liberty  of  tongue  being  granted  to  me, 
and  God's  written  word  being  admitted  for  judge." 

Thus  the  preacher  flung  down  his  glove  like  a  knight 
of  the  old  chivalry,  with  a  fiery  and  eager  hardihood  which 
we  could  the  better  admire  had  he  done  more  justice  to 
his  adversaries,  especially  the  Queen,  whose  good  inten- 
tions it  seems  so  difficult  to  misconstrue.  He  warns  her 
also,  in  the  same  high  tone,  that  her  enterprise  will  not 
succeed,  and  that  the  end  shall  be  her  confusion,  "  onless 
betimes  she  repent  and  desist,"  with  all  the  stern  certainty 
of  an  inspired  prophet.  Whether  the  serious  emissaries, 
who,  though  they  were  Protestants  "  had  begun  to  muse," 
and  perhaps  could  not  keep  their  eyes  from  remarking 
the  smoke  and  dust  of  the  ruins  behind  the  energetic 
figure  of  the  Eeformer,  conveyed  this  message  in  full  we 
may  be  permitted  to  doubt.  They  were  both  young  men, 
and  it  is  unlikely  they  would  prejudice  their  own  career 
by  repeating  to  the  Queen's  Grace  anything  about  her  blind 
rage  or  the  confusion  which  would  follow.  Lord  Sempill, 
who  accompanied  them,  and  who  was  of  the  Queen's  party 


272  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

—"a  man  sold  unto  sin,"  says  Knox — perhaps  did  more 
justice  to  the  message ;  but  Knox's  sole  desire  was  that  it 
should  be  repeated  word  by  word. 

We  need  not,  however,  follow  the  advances  and  retreats, 
the  always  imminent  encounter  for  which  the  Congrega- 
tion was  fully  ready,  but  from  which  the  Queen  and  her 
general  constantly  retired  at  the  last  moment,  before  the 
gates  of  Perth,  on  Cupar  Muir,  and  other  places,  making 
agreement  after  agreement  of  which  nothing  came.  In 
the  course  of  this  curious  dance  of  the  two  powers  con- 
fronting each  other  much  ink  was  shed,  however,  if  no 
blood,  and  the  representations,  letters,  bonds,  and  assur- 
ances must  have  kept  the  scribes  on  either  side  in  constant 
occupation.  The  Congregation  was  certainly  the  more 
argumentative  and  long  winded  of  the  correspondents,  and 
never  seems  to  have  lost  an  opportunity  of  a  letter.  They 
pervaded  the  country,  an  ever-increasing  band,  which, 
whenever  an  emergency  occurred,  was  multiplied  from 
every  quarter  at  the  raising  of  a  finger  on  the  part  of  the 
reforming  lords.  That  the  violent  beginning  made  in 
Perth  had  given  to  the  populace  a  taste  for  the  pleasures 
of  destruction,  however,  is  very  fully  evident,  and  it  soon 
became  clear  that  when  the  preachers  and  their  protectors 
moved  ''to  make  reformation,"  the  mob  who  followed 
them  would  leave  nothing  but  ruins  behind.  This  and 
the  method  of  it  is  very  well  set  forth  in  the  case  of  Scone, 
a  place  of  great  historical  interest,  where  the  ancient  kings 
of  Scotland  had  been  crowned.  It  would  seem  to  have 
been  a  raid  of  private  vengeance  which  directed  the  opera- 
tions, "  four  zealous  men,''*  irrestrainable,  it  would  seem, 
by  the  leaders,  having  set  out  from  Perth,  "  to  take  order 
with  that  place,"  considering  how  obstinately  proud  and 
despiteful  the  Bishop  of  Murray  had  been.  The  lords 
had  already  sent  a  letter  of  warning  to  the  Bishop,  who 
was  housed  in  some  abbey  near,  advertising  him  that  unless 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.        273 

lie  would  come  and  join  them  they  could  neither  spare 
nor  save  his  place.  But  while  the  answer  lingered  the 
town  of  Dundee  took  up  the  quarrel  and  set  forth  to 
carry  out  the  work. 

"  To  stay  them  was  first  sent  the  Provost  of  Dundee  and  his 
brother  Alexander  Halliburton  Capitain,  who  little  prevailing  was 
sent  unto  them  John  Knox ;  but  before  his  coming  they  were 
entered  to  the  pulling  down  of  the  idols  and  dortour  (dormitory). 
And  albeit  the  said  Maister  James  Halliburton,  Alexander  his 
brother,  and  the  said  John,  did  what  in  them  lay  to  have  stayed 
the  fury  of  the  multitude,  yet  were  they  not  able  to  put  order 
universalie  ;  and  therefore  they  sent  for  the  lords,  Earl  of  Argyle 
and  Lord  James,  who  coming  with  all  diligence  laboured  to  have 
saved  the  palace  and  the  kirk.  But  because  the  multitude  had 
found  buried  in  the  kirk  a  great  number  of  idols,  hid  of  purpose 
to  have  reserved  them  for  a  better  day  (as  the  Papists  speak)  the 
towns  of  Dundee  and  St.  Johnstone  could  not  be  satisfied  till 
that  the  whole  reparation  and  ornaments  of  the  church  (as  they 
term  it)  were  destroyed.  And  yet  did  the  lords  so  travel  that 
they  saved  the  Bishop's  palace  with  the  church  and  place  for 
that  night ;  for  the  two  lords  did  not  depart  till  they  brought 
•with  them  the  whole  number  of  those  who  most  sought  the 
Bishop's  displeasure.  The  Bishop,  greatly  offended  that  any- 
thing should  have  been  enterprised  in  reformation  of  his  place, 
asked  of  the  lords  his  bond  and  handwriting,  which  not  two 
hours  before  he  had  sent  to  them  (this  was  a  promise  to  come 
immediately  to  arrange  for  the  safetjr  of  his  see,  and  also  to  sup- 
port them  in  Parliament  in  gratitude  for  the  warning  they  had 
given  him)  ;  Which  delivered  to  his  messenger,  Sir  Adam  Brown, 
advertisement  was  given  that  if  any  further  displeasure  chanced 
unto  him  that  he  should  not  blame  them.  The  Bishop's  servants 
that  same  night  began  to  fortify  the  place  again,  and  began  to 
do  violence  to  some  that  were  carrying  away  such  baggage  as 
they  could  come  by.  The  Bishop's  girnel  was  kept  the  first  night 
by  the  labours  of  John  Knox,  who  by  exhortation  removed  such 
as  would  violentlie  have  made  irruption.  The  morrow  following, 
some  of  the  poor  in  hope  of  spoil,  and  some  of  Dundee  to  consider 
what  was  done,  passed  up  to  the  said  Abbey  of  Scone  ;  whereat 
the  Bishop's  servants  offended  began  to  threaten  and  speak 
proudly,  and  as  it  was  constantly  affirmed  one  of  the  Bishop's 

18 


ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

sons  stogged  through  with  a  rapier  one  of  Dundee  because  he 
was  looking  in  at  the  girnel  door.  This  bruit  noised  abroad,  the 
town  of  Dundee  was  more  enraged  than  before,  who  putting 
themselves  in  armour  sent  word  to  the  inhabitants  of  St.  John- 
stone,  '  That  unless  they  should  support  them  to  avenge  that  in- 
jury, that  they  should  never  from  that  day  concur  with  them  in 
any  action.'  They,  easilie  inflambed,  gave  the  alarm,  and  so  was 
that  abbey  and  palace  appointed  to  the  saccage  ;  in  doing  where- 
of they  took  no  long  deliberation,  but  committed  the  whole  to 
the  merriment  of  fire ;  whereat  no  small  number  of  us  was  so 
offended,  that  patientlie  we  could  not  speak  to  any  that  were  of 
Dundee  or  Saint  Johnstone." 

The  reader  will  see  in  this  frank  narrative  how  many 
elements  were  conjoined  to  bring  about  the  outrage.  Local 
jealousy  and  despite,  the  rage  against  the  Bishop  and  his 
priests,  the  eagerness  of  the  needy  in  hope  of  spoil,  the 
excitement  of  a  fray  in  which  the  first  blow  had  been  struck 
by  the  adversary  with  just  the  crown  of  a  supposed  religious 
motive  to  give  the  courage  of  a  great  cause  to  the  rioters  : 
while  on  the  other  hand  the  Bishop's  rashness  in  taking 
the  defense  upon  himself  and  slighting  the  assistance  of- 
fered him  is  equally  apparent.  It  is  evident  enough,  how- 
ever, that  the  lords  themselves  had  no  urgent  interest  in 
the  preservation  of  the  ancient  buildings,  and  that  Knox 
cared  little  for  any  of  these  things.  The  watch  of  the 
preacher  at  the  door  of  the  Bishop's  girnel  or  storehouse, 
keeping  back  the  rioters  by  his  exhortations,  is  a  curious 
illustration  of  this  point.  He  would  not  have  the  people 
soil  their  souls  with  thieving,  with  the  Bishop's  meal  and 
malt ;  as  for  the  historical  walls,  the  altar  where  the  old 
kings  had  been  anointed  or  the  sanctuary  where  their 
ashes  lay,  what  were  they  ?  Knox  was  too  much  intent 
on  setting  Scotland  loose  from  all  previous  traditions — 
from  the  past  which  was  idolatrous  and  corrupt,  and 
in  which  till  it  reached  to  the  age  of  the  Apostles  he 
recognized  no  good  thing — to  be  concerned  about  the 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.        275 

temples  of  Baal.  What  he  wanted  was  to  cut  all  these 
dark  ages  away,  and  affiliate  himself  and  his  country  direct 
to  Judaea  and  Jerusalem,  to  the  Jewish  church,  not  the 
Gothic  or  the  papal,  or  any  perverted  image  of  what  he 
believed  primitive  Christianity  to  have  been.  He  served 
himself  heir  to  Peter  and  Paul,  to  Elijah  and  Ezekiel,  and 
perhaps  in  the  strong  prepossession  of  his  soul  against  con- 
temporary monks  and  ecclesiastics  did  not  even  know  that 
the  Church  which  was  so  corrupt,  and  the  religious  orders 
which  had  fallen  so  low,  had  ever  brought  or  preserved 
light  and  blessing  to  the  world.  Scottish  history,  Scottish 
art,  were  corrupted  too,  and  woven  about  with  associations 
of  these  hated  priests  and  their  system  which  was  not  true 
religion,  but  "devised  by  the  brain  of  man"  ;  and  though 
he  was  himself  the  most  complete  incarnation  of  Scotch 
vehemence,  dogmatism,  national  pride,  and  fiery  feeling, 
he  was  indifferent  to  their  national  records.  His  pride 
was  involved  in  making  his  country  stand,  alone  if  need 
was,  or  if  not  alone,  then  first,  in  passionate  perfection 
in  the  new  order  of  things  in  the  kingdom  of  Christ :  not 
to  keep  her  a  place  in  the  unity  of  nations  by  preserving 
the  traces  of  an  old  civilization  and  institutions  as  vener- 
able and  noteworthy  as  any  in  Christendom,  but  to  make 
of  her  a  chosen  nation  like  that  people,  long  ago  dispersed 
by  a  sufficiently  miserable  catastrophe,  to  whom  was  given 
of  old  the  mission  of  showing  forth  the  will  of  God  before 
the  world.  Whether  what  he  gained  for  his  country  was 
not  much  more  important  than  what  he  thus  deliberately 
sacrificed  is  a  question  that  will  never  be  answered  with 
any  unanimity.  He  gained  for  his  race  a  great  freedom, 
which  cannot  be  justly  called  religious  freedom,  because 
it  was,  in  his  intention  at  least,  freedom  to  follow  their 
own  way,  with  none  at  all  for  those  who  differed  from  them. 
He  set  up  a  high  standard  of  piety  and  probity,  and  for 
once  made  the  business  of  the  soul,  the  worship  of  God 


276  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

and  study  of  His  laws,  the  most  absorbing  of  public  inter- 
ests. He  thrilled  the  whole  country  through  and  through 
with  the  inspiration  of  a  fervent  spirit,  uncompromising 
in  its  devotion  to  the  truth,  asking  no  indulgence  if  also, 
perhaps,  giving  none,  serving  God  in  his  own  way  with  a 
fidelity  above  every  bribe,  scornful  of  every  compromise. 
But  he  cut  Scotland  adrift  so  far  as  in  him  lay  from  the 
brotherhood  of  habit  and  tradition,  from  the  communion, 
if  not  of  saints,  yet  of  many  saintly  uses,  and  much  that 
is  beautiful  in  Christian  life.  He  made  his  country 
eminent,  and  secured  for  her  one  great  chapter  in  the 
history  of  the  world  ;  but  he  imprinted  upon  her  a  certain 
narrowness  uncongenial  to  her  character  and  to  her  past, 
which  has  undervalued  her  to  many  superficial  observers, 
and  done  perhaps  a  little,  but  a  permanent,  harm  to  her 
national  ideal  ever  since.  A  small  evil  for  so  much  good, 
but  yet  not  to  be  left  unacknowledged. 

More  interesting  in  its  human  aspect  is  Knox's  si]  pear- 
ance  in  St.  Andrews,  whither  the  Congregation  now 
crowded  to  f<rmake  reformation,"  though  doubtful  if  even 
the  populace  were  on  their  side.  The  Bishop  "  hearing  of 
reformation  to  be  made  in  his  cathedral  church,  thought 
time  to  stir,  or  else  never  " — which  was  very  natural. 
He  was  accompanied  by  a  hundred  spears,  which  must 
have  meant  a  company  at  least  of  four  or  five  hundred 
armed  men,  while  the  Lords  of  the  Congregation  had 
"  their  quiet  households,"  no  doubt  a  very  adequate  escort. 
The  Bishop  threatened  that  if  JohnKnox  showed  his  face 
in  the  cathedral  he  should  be  saluted  with  a  dozen  of 
culverins,  and  the  gentlemen  with  him  hesitated  much  to 
expose  him  to  such  a  risk  :  but  their  doubts  were  not 
shared  by  the  preacher.  He  had  himself  given  forth, 
when  in  the  galley  laboring  at  the  oar  in  sight  of  the  be- 
loved town  and  sanctuary,  a  prophecy  that  he  should  yet 
preach  there,  unlikely  as  it  looked  ;  and  to  recoil  from 


ST.  ANDREWS.— Page  2T6. 


Royal  Edinburgh. 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  277 

any  danger,  when  such  an  opportunity  arose,  was  not  in 
him.  "  To  delay  to  preach  the  morrow  (unless  the  bodie 
be  violentlie  witholden)  I  cannot/'  he  said.  He  preached 
upon  the  casting  out  of  the  money-changers  from  the 
Temple — a  very  dangerous  subject  for  such  an  occasion, 
and  "  applied  the  corruption  that  was  there  to  the  cor- 
ruption that  is  in  the  Papestri "  so  well  that  the  magis- 
trates of  the  town  and  also  the  commonalty  "  for  the  most 
part,  did  agree  to  remove  all  monuments  of  idolatrie,  which 
also  they  did  with  expedition."  But  it  was  not  on  that 
day  that  the  great  church  shining  from  afar  on  its  rocky 
headland,  a  splendid  landmark  over  the  dangerous  bay, 
was  reduced  to  the  condition  in  which  it  now  remains, 
with  a  few  forlorn  but  graceful  pinnacles  rising  against 
the  misty  blue  of  sea  and  sky.  No  harm  would  seem  to 
have  been  done  except  to  the  altars  and  the  decorations  : 
and  according  to  all  evidence  it  is  more  to  the  careless 
brutality  of  the  eighteenth  century,  which  found  an  ex- 
cellent storehouse  of  materials  for  building  in  the  aban- 
doned shrine,  than  to  any  absolute  outrage  that  its  pres- 
ent state  of  utter  ruin  is  due. 

The  Congregation  set  forth  on  its  march  to  Stirling,  and 
thence  to  Edinburgh  in  June,  and  so  great  was  the  com- 
motion which  had  been  raised  by  the  rumor  of  the  reforma- 
tion wrought  in  the  north  in  Scone  and  St.  Johnstone  that 
the  mere  news  of  their  approach  roused  "  therasckall  mul- 
titude "  to  the  mood  of  destruction.  They  had  cleared 
out  and  destroyed  the  convents  in  Stirling,  and  those  of 
the  Black  and  Gray  Friars  in  Edinburgh,  before  the  Ee- 
formers  came — a  result  which  Knox  at  least  in  no  way 
pauses  to  deplore  :  they  had  left  nothing,  he  says,  "  but 
bare  walls,  yea,  not  so  much  as  door  or  windok  :  wherthrou 
we  were  the  less  troubled  in  putting  order  in  such  places/' 
Thus  the  flood  of  Kevolution,  of  Reformation,  of  funda- 
mental, universal  change  flowed  on.  The  victory  was  not 


278  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

assured,  however,  as  perhaps  they  had  hoped  when  they 
entered  Edinburgh,  for  though  for  a  time  everything 
went  well,  and  the  preaching  seems  to  have  been  followed 
by  the  greater  part  of  the  city,  the  Queen,  ever  active, 
though  never  striking  any  decisive  blow,  had  received 
reinforcements  from  France,  and  to  the  great  alarm  of 
the  Congregation  had  begun  to  fortify  Leith,  forming  a 
strong  garrison  there  of  French  soldiers,  and  making  a 
new  stronghold  near  enough  to  be  a  perpetual  menace 
to  Edinburgh  almost  at  her  door.  The  position  of  affairs 
at  this  moment  was  curious  in  the  extreme.  The  Queen 
in  Leith,  surrounded  by  the  newly  arrived  forces  of 
France,  with  Frenchmen  placed  in  all  the  great  offices, 
fulminated  forth  decrees,  commands,  explanations,  orders, 
from  within  the  walls  that  were  being  quickly  raised  to 
make  the  fort  a  strong  place,  and  from  amidst  the  garrison 
of  her  own  countrymen,  in  whose  fidelity  she  could  fully 
trust.  In  Edinburgh  the  Congregation  were  virtually 
supreme,  but  very  uneasy  ;  their  substantial  adversaries 
quieted,  but  ever  on  the  watch  ;  the  populace  ready  to  pull 
down  and  destro}r  at  their  indication,  but  not  to  change 
their  life  or  character — an  unstable  support  should  trouble 
come  ;  while  in  the  castle  Lord  Erskine  sat  impartial,  a 
sort  of  silent  umpire,  taking  neither  side,  though  ready  to 
intervene  with  a  great  gun  on  either  as  occasion  moved 
him.  The  fire  of  words  which  was  kept  up  between  the 
two  parties  is  one  of  the  most  amazing  features  of  the  con- 
flict. For  every  page  the  Queen's  secretaries  wrote,  John 
Knox  was  ready  with  ten  to  demonstrate  her  errors,  her 
falsehood,  the  impossibility  that  any  good  could  come  from 
an  idolater  such  as  she.  Other  persons  take  part  in  the 
great  wrangle,  but  he  is  clearly  the  scribe  and  moving 
spirit.  He  writes  to  her  in  his  own  person,  in  that  of  the 
Lord  James,  in  that  of  the  Congregation.  She  accuses 
them  of  rebellion  and  treasonable  intentions  against  her- 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  279 

self — and  they  her  of  her  Frenchmen  and  her  fortifications. 
She  summons  them  to  leave  Edinburgh  on  peril  of  all  the 
penalties  that  attend  high  treason  ;  they  demand  from  her 
that  the  Frenchmen  should  be  sent  away  and  the  proceed- 
ings stopped.  She  accuses  the  Duke  Chatelherault — the 
head  of  the  Hamiltons,  the  next  heir  to  the  throne — of 
treasonable  proceedings,  and  he  vindicates  himself  by 
sound  of  trumpet  at  the  Cross  of  Edinburgh.  The  cor- 
respondence grows  to  such  a  pitch  that  when  she  loses 
patience  and  bids  them  be  gone  before  a  certain  day,  they 
meet  in  solemn  conclave,  to  which  the  preachers  are  called 
to  give  their  advice,  to  discuss  whether  it  is  lawful  to  de- 
pose her  from  her  regency  :  and  all  consent  with  one  voice 
to  her  deprivation.  The  excitement  of  this  continual  ex- 
change of  correspondence,  the  messages  coming  and  going, 
from  the  Queen's  side  the  Lyon  King  himself,  all  glorious 
among  his  pursuivants,  advancing  from  Leith  with  his 
brief  letter  and  his  "  credit "  as  spokesman,  the  others 
replying  and  re-replying,  scarcely  ever  without  a  response 
or  a  denunciation  to  read  over  and  talk  over,  must  have 
kept  the  nerves  and  intelligence  of  all  at  a  perpetual  strain. 
At  St.  Giles's  and  the  Tolbooth  close  by,  which  were  the 
double  center  of  life  in  the  city,  there  was  a  perpetual 
alternation  of  preachings,  to  which  Lords  and  Commons 
would  crowd  together  to  listen  to  Kuox's  trumpet  peals  of 
fiery  eloquence,  always  upon  some  appropriate  text,  always 
instinct  with  the  most  vehement  energy,  and  consulta- 
tions upon  public  affairs  and  how  to  promote  the  triumph 
of  religion  ;  the  lords  pondering  and  sometimes  doubtful, 
the  preacher  ever  uncompromising  and  absolute.  A  ques- 
tion of  public  honesty  had  arisen  in  the  midst  of  the 
struggle  for  the  faith,  and  the  Reformers  had  seized  the 
Mint  to  prevent  the  coining  of  base  money,  which  the 
Regent  was  carrying  on  for  her  necessities,  and  which  the 
Congregation,  no  doubt  justly,  considered  ruinous  to  the 


280  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

trade  of  the  country  ;  and  the  determined  struggle  with 
the  Queen  in  respect  to  her  scheme  for  fortifying  Leitli 
and  establishing  a  French  garrison  there, — a  continual 
check  upon  and  menace  to  the  freedom  of  the  capital, — 
was  at  least  as  much  a  question  of  politics  as  religion. 

The  Congregation,  however,  was  not  yet  strong  enough 
to  be  able  to  meet  the  French  forces,  and  when  they 
attempted  to  besiege  Leith  and  put  a  forcible  stop  to  the 
building  they  were  defeated  with  shame  and  loss.  A  curi- 
ous sign  of  the  inevitable  "  rift  within  the  lute/'  which 
up  to  this  time  had  been  avoided  by  the  concentration  of 
all  men's  thoughts  upon  the  first  necessity  of  securing  the 
freedom  of  the  preachings,  becomes  visible  before  this 
futile  attempt  at  a  siege.  When  the  leaders  of  the  Con- 
gregation, among  whom  on  this  occasion  the  contingent 
from  the  towns,  and  especially  from  Dundee,  seems  fore- 
most, began  to  prepare  for  their  expedition,  they  chose  St. 
Giles's  Church  as  the  most  convenient  for  the  preparation 
of  the  scaling  ladders,  a  practical  evidence  that  sacredness 
had  departed  from  the  church  as  a  building,  not  at  all  to 
the  mind  of  the  preachers,  who  probably  saw  no  logical 
succession  between  the  hammers  of  the  destroyers  pulling 
down  the  "  glorious  tabernacles  "  and  those  of  the  crafts- 
men occupied  with  secular  work.  They  did  not,  indeed, 
put  their  objections  on  this  ground,  but  on  that  of  the 
neglect  of  the  "  preaching,"  a  name  now  characteristically 
applied  to  the  public  worship  of  God.  "The  Preachers 
spared  not  openly  to  say  that  they  feared  the  success  of 
that  enterpryse  should  not  be  prosperous  because  the  be- 
ginning appeyred  to  bring  with  it  some  contempt  of  God 
and  of  His  word.  Other  places,  said  they,  had  been  more 
apt  for  such  preparations  than  where  the  people  convened 
to  common  prayer  and  unto  preaching,  and  they  did  not 
hesitate  to  affirm  that  God  would  not  suffer  such  contempt 
of  His  word."  "Whether  these  objections  stole  the  heart 


ST.  GILES'S  FROM  PRINCES  STREET.-Page  230. 

Royal  Edinburgh. 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  281 

out  of  the  fighting  men,  who  had  hitherto  felt  themselves 
emphatically  the  soldiers  of  God,  it  is  impossible  to  say. 
They  had  hitherto  overawed  the  Queen's  party  by  their 
numbers,  and  had  never  outwardly  made  proof  of  their 
powers  or  sustained  the  attack  of  regular  soldiers.  And 
the  assault  of  Leith  ended  in  a  disastrous  defeat.  The 
expedition  set  ont  rashly  without  leaders,  while  the  lords 
and  gentlemen  "  were  gone  to  the  preaching,"  and  had 
consequently  no  accompanying  cavalry,  and  few,  if  any, 
experienced  soldiers.  They  were  driven  back  with  loss, 
and  pursued  into  the  very  Canongate,  to  the  foot  of  Leith 
Wynd — that  is,  into  the  cross-roads  and  narrow  wynds 
which  were  immediately  outside  the  city  walls.  Argyle 
and  the  rest,  as  soon  as  they  Avere  aware  of  what  had 
happened,  got  hastily  to  horse,  and  did  all  they  conld  to 
stop  the  flight,  but  even  this  turned  to  harm,  since  the 
horsemen  coming  out  to  the  aid  of  their  friends  proved  an 
additional  danger  to  the  fugitives,  and  "  over-rode  their 
poor  brethren  at  th  entrance  of  the  Nether  Bow." 

After  this  all  was  confusion  and  trouble  in  Edinburgh. 
The  castle  fired  one  solitary  gun,  which  stopped  with  a 
note  of  sudden  protest  the  French  pursuit,  coming  with 
extraordinary  dramatic  effect  into  the  always  graphic  and 
picturesque  narrative,  over  the  heads  of  the  flying,  dis- 
comfited crowd  which  was  struggling  among  the  horses' 
hoofs  at  the  narrow  gate,  and  the  Frenchmen  straggling 
behind,  up  all  the  narrow  passages  into  the  Canongate, 
snatching  a  piece  of  plunder  where  they  could  find  it, 
"  one  a  kietill,  ane  other  ane  pettycoat,  the  third  a  pote 
or  a  pan."  "  Je  pense  que  vous  1'avez  achete  sans  argent," 
the  Queen  is  reported  to  have  said  with  a  laugh  as  the 
pursuers  came  back  to  Leith  with  their  not  very  important 
booty.  "  This  was  the  great  and-  motherlie  care  she  took 
for  the  truth  of  the  poor  subjects  of  this  realm,"  says 
Knox  bitterly  ;  and  yet  it  was  very  natural  that  she  should 


282  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

have  been  overjoyed,  after  all  these  controversies,  to  feel 
herself  the  stronger,  if  not  in  argument  at  least  in  actual 
fight. 

This  defeat  told  greatly  upon  the  spirits  of  the  Con- 
gregation which  had  hitherto  been  kept  together  by  suc- 
cess, and  which  was  in  fact  a  mere  horde  of  men  hastily 
collected,  untrained  in  actual  warfare,  and  in  no  position 
for  taking  the  offensive  though  strong  in  defense  of  their 
rights.  And  money  hud  failed.  It  was  determined  that 
each  gentleman  should  give  his  plate  to  be  made  into  coin 
to  supply  the  needs  of  the  Congregation,  as  they  had  the 
Mint  in  their  hands  :  but  the  officials  stole  away  with  the 
"  irons  "  and  this  was  made  impracticable.  They  then 
sent  for  a  supply  to  the  English  envoys  who  were  anx- 
iously watching  the  progress  of  events  at  Berwick  :  but 
the  sum  sent  to  them  in  answer  to  their  application  was 
intercepted  by  the  Earl  of  Both  well — his  first  appearance 
in  history,  on  which  he  was  to  leave  thereafter  such  traces 
of  disaster.  And  other  encounters  with  the  Frenchmen 
took  the  heart  entirely  out  of  the  Congregation  ;  the  party 
began  to  dissolve,  stealing  away  on  every  side.  "Our 
soldiers"  (mercenaries  it  is  to  be  supposed  in  distinction 
from  the  retainers  of  the  lords  and  gentlemen)  "  could 
skarslie  be  dang  out  of  the  town  "to  meet  a  sally  from 
Leith.  In  Edinburgh  itself  the  rasckall  multitude,  which 
had  been  so  ready  to  destroy  and  ravage,  began  to  throw 
stones  at  the  Reformers  and  call  them  traitors  and  heretics. 
Finally  with  hearts  penetrated  by  disappointment  and  the 
misery  of  defeat  the  Congregation  abandoned  Edinburgh 
altogether  and  marched  to  Stirling  with  drooping  arms 
and  hearts. 

"The  said  day  at  nine  in  the  night,"  says  a  contem- 
porary authority,  "  the  Congregation  departed  forth  of 
Edinburgh  to  Linlithgow  and  left  their  artillerie  void  upon 
the  causeway  lying,  and  the  town  desolate."  It  was 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  283 

November,  and  the  darkness  of  the  night  could  not  have 
been  more  dark  than  the  prospects  and  thoughts  of  that 
dejected  baud,  a  little  while  before  so  triumphant.  As 
the  tramp  of  the  half-seen  procession  went  heavily  down 
the  tortuous  streets  at  the  back  of  the  castle,  probably  by 
the  West  Bow  and  "West  Port,  diving  down  into  the  dark- 
ness under  that  black  shadow  where  the  garrison  sat 
grimly  impartial  taking  no  part,  the  populace,  perhaps 
frightened  by  the  too  great  success  of  their  own  fickle 
and  cruel  desertion  of  the  cause,  and  hoping  little  from 
the  return  of  the  priests,  would  seem  to  have  beheld  with 
silent  dismay  the  departure  of  the  Congregation.  The 
guns  which  had  done  them  so  little  service  which  they 
left  on  the  road,  as  the  preachers  would  have  had  them 
leave  all  the  devices  and  aid  of  men,  were  gathered  in  by 
the  soldiers  from  the  castle  with  little  demonstration,  and 
the  town  was  left  desolate.  The  anonymous  writer  of  the 
Diurnal  of  Occurrents  is  curiously  impartial  and  puts 
down  his  brief  records  without  any  expression  of  feeling  : 
but  a  certain  thrill  is  in  these  words  as  of  something  too 
impressive  and  significant  to  be  passed  by. 

It  is  at  this  miserable  moment  that  John  Knox  shows 
himself  at  his  best.  Hitherto  his  vehemence,  his  fierce 
oratory,  his  interminable  letters  and  addresses,  though 
instinct  with  all  the  reality  of  a  most  vigorous,  even  rest- 
less nature,  represent  to  us  rather  a  man  who  would  if 
he  could  have  done  everything, — the  fighting  and  the 
protocoling  as  well  as  the  preaching,  a  man  to  whom 
repose  was  impossible,  ever  ready  to  draw  forth  his  pen, 
to  mount  his  pulpit,  to  add  his  eager  word  to  every  con- 
sultation, and  enjoying  nothing  so  much  as  to  press  the 
most  unpleasant  truths  upon  his  correspondents  and 
hearers, — than  one  of  sustaining  power  and  wisdom.  The 
uncompromising  fidelity  with  which  he  pointed  out  the 
shortcomings  of  those  about  him,  and  the  terrible  penalties 


284  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

laid  up  for  them  ;  and  the  stern  denunciations  in  his 
letters,  even  those  which  he  intended  to  be  conciliatory, 
make  his  'appearance  in  general  more  alarming  than  reas- 
suring. An  instance  which  almost  tempts  a  smile,  grave 
as  are  all  the  circumstances  and  surroundings,  is  his  letter 
(written  some  time  before  the  point  at  which  we  have  now 
arrived)  to  Cecil  whom  he  had  known  in  England,  and 
whose  favor  he  desired  to  secure  and  indeed  was  con- 
fident of  securing.  For  once  he  had  something  to  ask  for 
himself,  permission  to  land  in  England  on  his  way  back 
to  his  native  country  ;  and  greatly  desired  that  a  favor- 
able representation  of  his  case  might  be  made  to  Queen 
Elizabeth,  who  was  naturally  prejudiced  against  him  by 
his  fame  as  Blast  against  the  Monstrous  Regiment  of 
Women.  The  following  letter  was  written  from  Dieppe  in 
April  1559  with  the  hope  of  procuring  these  favors  from 
the  great  statesman. 

"  As  I  have  no  plaisure  with  long  writing  to  trouble  you,  Rycht 
Honourable,  whose  mind  I  know  to  be  occupied  with  most  grave 
matters,  so  mind  I  not  greatly  to  labour  by  long  preface  to  con- 
ciliate your  favour,  which  I  suppose  I  have  already  (howsomever 
rumours  bruit  the  coatrarie)  as  it  becometh  one  member  of 
Christ's  body  to  have  of  another.  The  contents,  therefore,  of 
these  my  presents  shall  be  absolved  in  two  points.  In  the  for- 
mer I  purpose  to  discharge  in  brief  words  my  conscience  towards 
you,  and  in  the  other  somewhat  I  must  speik  in  my  own  defence 
and  in  defence  of  that  poor  flock  of  lait  assembled  in  the  most 
godly  Reformed  church  and  city  of  the  world  Geneva.  To  you, 
Sir,  I  say,  that  as  from  God  ye  have  received  life,  wisdom, 
honours  and  this  present  estate  in  which  ye  stand,  so  ought  you 
wholly  to  employ  the  same  to  the  advancement  of  His  glory,  who 
only  is  the  Author  of  life,  the  fountain  of  wisdom,  and  who,  most 
assuredly,  doth  and  will  honour  those  that  with  simple  hearts  do 
glorify  Him  ;  which,  alas,  in  times  past  ye  have  not  done  ;  but 
being  overcome  with  common  iniquity  ye  have  followed  the 
world  in  the  way  of  perdition.  For  to  the  suppressing  of  Christ's 
true  Evangell,  to  the  erecting  of  idolatrie,  and  to  the  shedding 
of  the  blood  of  God's  dear  children,  have  you  by  silence  consented 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  285 

and  subscribed.  This,  your  most  horrible  defection  from  the 
truth  known  and  once  professed,  hath  God  to  this  day  merci- 
fully spared  ;  yea,  to  man's  judgment  He  hath  utterly  forgotten 
and  pardoned  the  same.  He  hath  not  entreated  you  as  He  hath 
done  others  (of  like  knowledge) ,  whom  in  His  anger  (but  yet  most 
justly  according  to  their  deserts)  He  did  shortly  strike  after  their 
defection.  But  you,  guilty  in  the  same  offences,  He  hath  fos- 
tered and  preserved  as  it  were  in  His  own  bosom.  As  the  benefit 
which  ye  have  received  is  great,  so  must  God's  justice  require  of 
you  a  thankful  heart ;  for  seeing  that  His  mercy  hath  spared  you 
being  traitor  to  His  Majesty  ;  seeing,  further,  that  among  your 
enemies  He  hath  preserved  you  ;  and  last,  seeing  that  although 
worthy  of  Hell  He  hath  promoted  you  to  honour  and  dignity,  of 
you  must  He  require  (because  He  is  just)  earnest  repentance  for 
your  former  defection,  a  heart  mindful  of  His  merciful  provi- 
dence, and  a  will  so  ready  to  advance  His  glory  that  evidently  it 
may  appear  that  in  vain  ye  have  not  received  these  graces  of 
God — to  performance  whereof  of  necessity  it  is  that  carnal  wis- 
dom and  worldly  policy  (to  the  which  both  ye  are  bruited  too 
much  incline)  give  place  to  God's  simple  and  naked  truth — very 
love  compelleth  me  to  say  that  except  the  Spirit  of  God  purge 
your  heart  from  that  venom  which  your  eyes  have  seen  to  be 
destruction  to  others,  that  ye  shall  not  long  escape  the  reward  of 
dissemblers.  Call  to  mind  what  you  ever  heard  proclaimed  in 
the  chapel  of  Saint  James,  when  this  verse  of  the  first  Psalm  was 
entreated,  '  Not  so,  oh  wicked,  not  so  ;  but  as  the  dust  which  the 
wind  hath  tossed,  etc.'  .  .  .  And  this  is  the  conclusion  of  that 
which  to  yourself  I  say.  Except  that  in  the  cause  of  Christ's 
Evangel  ye  be  found  simple,  sincere,  fervent  and  unfeigned,  ye 
shall  taste  of  the  same  cup  which  politic  heads  have  drunken  be- 
fore you." 

This  manner  of  approaching  a  powerful  statesman  whose 
good  offices  might  be  of  the  uttermost  consequence  both  to 
the  writer  and  his  party,  is  highly  characteristic.  There 
is  something  almost  comic,  if  we  dared  to  interpose  such 
a  view  between  two  such  personages,  in  the  warning  against 
"  carnal  wisdom  and  worldly  policy  to  the  which  both 
ye  are  bruited  too  much  inclined,"  addressed  to  the  great 
Burleigh.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  the  outburst  of  a  laugh 


286  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

between  such  a  pair,  yet  grave  Cecil  surely    must  have 
smiled. 

The  man  who  wrote  this  epistle  and  many  another, 
leagues  of  letters  in  no  one  of  which  does  he  ever  mince 
matters,  or  refrain  to  deliver  his  conscience  before  convey- 
ing the  message  of  State  with  which  he  is  charged — is 
often  wordy,  sometimes  tedious,  now  and  then  narrow  as 
a  village  gossip,  always  supremely  and  absolutely  dog- 
matic, seeing  no  way  but  his  own  and  acknowledging  no 
possibility  of  error  ;  and  the  extreme  and  perpetual  move- 
ment of  his  ever-active  mind,  his  high-blooded  intolerance, 
the  restless  force  about  him  which  never  pauses  to  take 
breath,  is  the  chief  impression  produced  upon  the  reader 
by  his  own  unfolding  of  himself  in  his  wonderful  history. 
Though  he  is  too  great  and  important  to  be  called  a  busy- 
body, we  still  feel  sympathetically  something  of  the  sup- 
pressed irritation  and  sense  of  hindrance  and  interruption 
with  which  the  lords  must  have  regarded  this  companion 
with  his  "devout  imaginations/'  whom  they  dared  not 
neglect,  and  who  was  sure  to  get  the  better  in  every  argu- 
ment, generally  by  reason,  but  at  all  events  by  the  innate 
force  of  his  persistence  and  daring.  But  when  they  came 
to  Stirling,  after  "  that  dusk  and  dolorous  night  wherein 
all  ye  my  lords  with  shame  and  fear  left  the  town,  the 
eager  nervous  form,  the  dark  keen  face  of  the  preacher, 
rose  before  the  melancholy  bands  like  those  of  the  hero- 
leader,  the  standard-bearer  of  God.  It  was  Wednesday  the 
7th  of  November  1559  when  the  dispirited  Congregation 
met  for  the  preaching  and  to  consider  afterwards  "  what 
was  the  next  remedy  in  so  desperate  a  case/'  Knox  took 
for  his  text  certain  verses  of  the  eightieth  Psalm.  "  How 
long  wilt  thou  be  angry  against  the  prayers  of  thy  people  ? 
Thou  hast  fed  us  with  the  bread  of  tears  ;  and  hast  given 
us  tears  to  drink  in  great  measure.  0  God  of  hosts,  turn 
USD  gain,  make  thy  face  to  shine  ;  and  we  shall  be  saved/' 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  287 

He  began  by  asking,  Why  were  the  people  of  God  thus 
oppressed  ? 

"  Our  faces  are  this  day  confounded,  our  enemies  triumph,  our 
hearts  have  quaked  for  fear,  and  yet  they  remain  oppressed  with 
sorrow  and  shame.  But  what  shall  we  think  to  be  the  very  cause 
that  God  hath  thus  dejected  us?  If  I  shall  say  our  sins  and 
former  uiithankfulness  to  God,  I  speak  the  truth.  But  yet  I 
spake  more  genei  allie  than  necessity  required  :  for  when  the  sins 
of  men  are  rebuked  in  general,  seldom  it  is  that  man  descendeth 
within  himself,  accusing  and  damning  in  himself  that  which 
most  displeaseth  God." 

To  tins  particular  self-examination  he  then  leads  his 
hearers  in  order  that  they  may  not  take  refuge  in  general- 
ities, bnt  that  each  man  may  examine  himself.  "  I  will 
divide  our  whole  company/'  he  says,  "  into  two  sorts  of 
men.  The  one,  those  who  hare  been  attached  to  the  cause 
from  the  beginning  ;  the  other,  recent  converts. " 

"  Let  us  begin  at  ourselves  who  longest  has  continued  in  this 
battle.  When  we  were  a  few  in  number,  in  comparison  with  our 
enemies,  when  we  had  neither  Erie  nor  Lord  (a  few  excepted) 
to  comfort  us,  we  called  upon  God,  we  took  Him  for  our  pro- 
tector, defence,  and  onlie  refuge.  Among  us  was  heard  no  brag- 
ging of  multitude  or  of  our  strength  or  policy,  we  did  only  sob 
to  God,  to  have  respect  to  the  equity  of  our  cause  and  to  the  cruel 
pursuit  of  the  tyranef ul  enemy.  But  since  that  our  number  has 
been  multiplied,  and  chiefly  since  my  Lord  Duke  his  Grace  with 
his  friends  have  been  joined  with  us,  there  was  nothing  heard 
but  '  This  Lord  will  bring  these  many  hundred  spears  :  if  this 
Earl  be  ours  no  man  in  such  and  such  a  bounds  will  trouble  us.' 
And  thus  the  best  of  us  all,  that  before  felt  God's  potent  hand  to 
be  our  defence,  hath  of  late  days  put  flesh  to  be  our  arm." 

This  proved,  which  was  an  evil  he  had  struggled  against 
with  might  and  main,  forbidding  all  compromises,  all  con- 
cessions that  might  have  served  to  attract  the  help  of  the 
powerful,  and  conciliate  lukewarm  supporters,  he  turns  to 
the  other  side. 


288  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

"  But  wherein  hath  my  Lord  Duik  his  Grace  and  his  friends 
offended  ?    It  may  be  that  as  we  have  trusted  in  them  so  have 
they  put  too  much  confidence  in  their  own  strength.     But  grant- 
ing so  be  or  not,  I  see  a  cause  most  just  why  the  duke  and  his 
friends  should  thus  be  confounded  among  the  rest  of  their  breth- 
ren.    I  have  not  yet  forgotten  what  was  the  dolour  and  anguish 
of  my  own  heart  when  at  St.  Johnstone,  Cupar  Muir,  and  Edin- 
burgh Crags,  those  cruel  murderers,  that  now  hath  put  us  to  this 
dishonour,  threatened  our  present  destruction.     My  Lord  Duke 
his  Grace,  and  his  friends  at  all  the  three  jornayes,  was  to  them 
a  great  comfort  and  unto  us  a  great  discourage  ;  for  his  name 
and  authority  did  more  affray  and  astonish  us,  than  did  the  force 
of  the  other :  yea,  without  his  assistance  they  would  not  have 
compelled  us  to  appoint  with  the  Queen  upon  unequal  conditions. 
I  am  uncertain  if  my  Lord's  Grace  hath  uiifeignedly  repented 
of  his  assistance  to  those  murderers  unjustly  pursuing  us.     Yea, 
I  am  uncertain  if  he  hath  repented  of  that  innocent  blood  of 
Christ's  blessed  martyrs  which  was  shed  in  his  default.     But  let 
it  be  that  so  he  hath  done,  as  I  hear  that  he  hath  confessed  his 
offence  before  the  Lords  and  brethren  of  the  Congregation,  yet  I 
am  assured  that  neither  he,  nor  yet  his  friends,  did  feel  before 
this  time  the  anguish  and  grieving  of  heart  which  we  felt  when 
they  in  their  blind  fury  pursued  us.     And  therefore  hath  God 
justly  permitted  both  them  and  tis  to  fall  in  this  confusion  at 
once  ;  us  for  that  we  put  our  trust  and  confidence  in  man ,  and 
them  because  that  they  should  feel  in  their  own  hearts  how  bitter 
was  the  cup  which  they  had  made  others  to  drink  before  them. 
Rests  that  both  they  and  we  turn  to  the  Eternal,  our  God  (who 
beats  down  to  death  to  the  intent  that  He  may  raise  up  again, 
to  leave  the  remembrance  of  His  wondrous  deliverance  to  the 
praise  of  His  own  name),  which  if  we  do  unfeignedly,  I  no  more 
doubt  that  this  our  dolour,  confusion,  and  fear,  shall  be  turned 
into  joy,  honour,  and  boldness,  than  that  I  doubt  that  God  gave  the 
victory  to  the  Israelities  over  the  Benjaminites  after  that  twice 
with  ignominy  they  were  repulsed  and  dang  back.      Yea,  what- 
soever shall  come  of  us  and  our  mortal  carcasses,  I  doubt  not  but 
this  cause  in  despite  of  Satan  shall  prevail  in  the  realm  of  Scot- 
land.   For  as  it  is  the  eternal  truth  of  the  eternal  God,  so  shall  it 
once  prevail,  however  for  a  time  it  may  be  hindered.     It  may  be 
that  God  shall  plague  some,  for  that  they  delight  not  in  the  truth, 
albeit  for  worldly  respects  they  seem  to  favour  it.     Yea,  God  may 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  289 

take  some  of  His  devout  children  away  before  their  eyes  see 
greater  trou  bles.  But  neither  shall  the  one  or  the  other  so  hinder 
this  action  but  in  the  end  it  shall  triumph." 

When  the  sermon  was  ended,  Knox  adds,  "  The  minds 
of  men  began  wonderfully  to  be  erected."  "  The  voice  of 
one  man,"  as  Randolph  afterwards  said,  was  "  able  in  an 
hour  to  put  more  life  in  us  than  six  hundred  trumpets 
continually  blustering  in 'our  ears."  The  boldness  with 
which  Knox  thus  exposed  that  elation  in  their  own  tem- 
porary success,  and  in  the  adhesion  of  the  Duke  of  Hamil- 
ton, which  had  led  the  leaders  of  the  Congregation  into 
self-confidence  and  slackened  their  watchfulness,  was 
made  solemn  and  authoritative  by  the  force  with  which  he 
pressed  his  personal  responsibility  into  every  man's  bosom. 
No  turn  of  fortune,  no  evil  fate,  but  God's  check 
upon  an  army  enlisted  in  His  name  yet  not  serving  Him 
with  a  true  heart,  was  this  momentary  downfall  ;  the 
cause  of  which  was  one  that  every  man  could  remove  in 
his  degree  ;  not  inherent  weakness  or  hopeless  fate,  but  a 
matter  remediable,  nay,  which  must  be  remedied  and  cast 
from  among  them — a  matter  which  might  quench  their 
personal  hopes  and  destroy  them,  but  could  not  affect  the 
divine  cause,  which  should  surely  triumph  whatever  man 
or  Satan  might  do.  More  than  six  hundred  trumpets, 
more  than  the  tramp  of  a  succoring  army,  it  rang  into 
the  men's  hearts.  Their  spirit  and  their  courage  rose  ;  the 
dolorous  night,  the  fear  and  shame,  dissolved  and  dis- 
appeared ;  and  the  question  what  to  do  was  met  not  with 
dejection  and  despair  but  with  a  rising  of  new  hope. 

The  decision  of  the  Congregation  in  the  Senate  which 
was  held  after  this  stirring  address  was,  in  the  first  place, 
to  address  an  appeal  for  help  to  England,  the  sister-nation 
which  had  already  made  reformation,  though  not  in  their 
way,  and  to  fight  the  matter  out  with  full  confidence  in  a 
happy  issue.  About  this  appeal  to  England,  however, 
19 


290  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

there  were  difficulties ;  for  Knox  who  suggested  it,  and 
whose  name  could  not  but  appear  in  the  matter,  had  given 
forth,  as  all  the  world  and  especially  the  persons  chiefly 
attacked  were  aware,  a  tremendous  "  blast"  against  the 
right  of  woman  to  reign,  particularly  well  or  ill  timed  in 
a  generation  subject  to  so  many  queens ;  and  it  was  nec- 
essary for  him  to  excuse  or  defend  himself  to  the  greatest 
of  the  female  sovereigns  whom  he  had  attacked.  Of 
course  it  was  easy  for  him  to  say  that  he  had  no  great 
Protestant  Elizabeth  in  his  eye  when  he  wrote,  but  only  a 
bigoted  and  sanguinary  Mary,  of  whom  no  one  knew  at 
the  time  that  her  reign  was  to  be  short,  and  her  power 
of  doing  evil  so  small.  It  is  almost  impossible  to  discuss 
gravely  nowadays  a  treatise  which,  even  in  its  name  (which 
is  all  that  most  people  know  of  it),  has  the  air  of  a  whim- 
sical ebullition  of  passion,  leaning  towards  the  ridiculous, 
rather  than  a  serious  protest  calculated  to  move  the  minds 
of  men.  But  this  was  not  the  aspect  under  which  it  ap- 
peared to  the  Queens  who  were  assailed,  not  as  individ- 
uals, but  as  a  class  intolerable  and  not  to  be  suffered  ;  and 
it  was  considered  necessary  that  Knox  should  write  to 
excuse  himself,  and  apologize  as  much  as  was  in  him  to 
the  Queen,  who  was  now  the  only  person  on  earth  to  whom 
the  Congregation  could  look  for  help.  Knox's  letter  to 
Queen  Elizabeth,  whom  he  addressed  indeed  more  as  a 
lesser  prince,  respectful  but  more  or  less  equal,  might 
do,  than  as  a  private  individual,  is  very  characteristic. 
He  has  to  apologize,  but  he  will  not  withdraw  from  the 
position  he  had  taken.  "I  cannot  deny  the  writing," 
he  says,  "neither  yet  am  I  minded  to  retreat  or  call  back 
any  principal  point  or  proposition  of  the  same."  But  he 
is  surprised  that  subject  of  offense  should  be  found  in  it 
by  her  for  whose  accession  he  renders  thanks  to  God, 
declaring  himself  willing  to  be  judged  by  moderate  and 
indifferent  men  which  of  the  parties  do  most  harm  to  the 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  291 

liberty  of  England,  he  who  affirms  that  no  woman  may  be 
exalted  above  any  realm  to  make  the  liberty  of  the  same 
thrall  to  any  stranger  nation,  "  or  they  that  approve  what- 
soever pleaseth  Princes  for  the  time."  Leaving  thus  the 
ticklish  argument  which  he  cannot  withdraw,  but  finds  it 
impolitic  to  bring  forward,  he  turns  to  the  Queen's  indi- 
vidual behavior  in  her  position  as  being  the  thing  most 
important  at  the  present  moment,  now  that  she  has  effect- 
vely  attained  her  unlawful  elevation. 

"Therefore,  Madam,  the  only  way  to  retain  and  keep  those 
benefits  of  God  abundantly  poured  now  of  late  days  upon  you 
and  upon  your  realm,  is  unfeignedly  to  render  unto  God,  to  His 
mercy  and  undeserved  grace,  the  glory  of  your  exaltation.  For- 
get your  birth,  and  all  title  which  thereupon  doth  hing  :  and  con- 
sider deeply  how  for  fear  of  your  life  ye  did  decline  from  God 
and  bow  till  idolatrie.  Let  it  not  appear  ane  small  offence  in 
your  eyes  that  ye  have  declined  from  Christ  in  the  day  of  His 
battle.  Neither  would  I  that  you  should  esteem  that  mercy  to  be 
vulgar  and  common  which  ye  have  received :  to  wit  that  God 
hath  covered  your  former  offence,  hath  preserved  you  when  you 
were  most  unthankful,  and  in  the  end  hath  exalted  and  raised 
you  up,  not  only  from  the  dust,  but  also  from  the  ports  of  death, 
to  rule  above  His  people  for  the  comfort  of  His  kirk.  It  apper- 
taineth  to  you,  therefore,  to  gi-ound  the  justice  of  your  authority, 
not  upon  that  law  which  from  year  to  year  doth  change,  but  upon 
the  eternal  providence  of  Him  who  contraire  to  nature  and  with- 
out your  deserving  hath  thus  exalted  your  head.  If  then,  in 
God's  presence  ye  humble  yourself,  as  in  my  heart  I  glorify  God 
for  that  rest  granted  to  His  afflicted  flock  within  England  under 
you  a  weik  instrument :  so  will  I  with  tongue  and  pen  justify 
your  authority  and  regiment  as  the  Holy  Ghost  hath  justified 
the  same  in  Debora  that  blessed  mother  in  Israel.  But  if  the 
premisses  (as  God  forbid)  neglected,  ye  shall  begin  to  brag  of 
your  birth  and  to  build  your  authority  and  regiment  upon  your 
own  law,  natter  you  who  so  list  your  felicity  shall  be  short.  In- 
terpret my  rude  words  in  the  best  part  as  written  by  him  who  is 
no  enemy  to  your  Grace." 

It  must  have  been  new  to  Queen  Elizabeth  to  hear  her- 


292  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

self  called  "  a  weik  instrument,"  and  it  is  doubtful  whether 
the  first  offense  would  be  much  softened  by  such  an  ad- 
dress. Neither  was  Elizabeth  a  person  to  be  amused  by 
the  incongruity  or  impressed  by  the  uncompromising  bold- 
ness of  the  Reformer  to  whom  the  language  of  apology  was 
so  hard.  Policy,  however,  has  little  to  do  with  personal 
offenses,  although  to  some  readers,  as  we  confess  to  our- 
selves, it  may  be  more  interesting  to  see  the  prophet  thus 
arrested,  hampered  by  his  own  trumpet-blast,  and  making 
amends  as  much  as  he  can  permit  himself  to  make,  though 
so  awkwardly  and  with  so  bold  a  return  upon  the  original 
offense,  to  the  offended  Queen.  It  was  far  more  easy  for 
him  to  warn  her  of  what  would  happen  did  she  fail  in  her 
duty  than  to  soothe  the  affront  with  gentle  words  ;  and  his 
attempt  at  the  latter  is  but  halting  and  feeble.  But  when 
he  promises  with  tongue  and  pen  to  justify  her  if  she  does 
well,  Knox  is  once  more  on  his  own  ground — that  of  a  man 
whose  office  is  superior  to  all  the  paltry  distinctions  of 
of  kingship  or  lordship,  a  servant  of  God  commissioned  to 
declare  his  divine  will,  endowed  with  an  insight  beyond 
that  of  ordinary  men,  and  declaring  with  boundless  cer- 
tainty and  confidence  the  things  which  are  to  be. 

We  may,  however,  pass  very  shortly  over  the  coming 
struggle.  The  English  army  marched  into  Scotland  in 
April,  1560,  and  addressed  itself  at  once  to  the  siege  of 
Leith,  the  headquarters  of  the  French  whom  the  Queen 
Eegent  had  brought  into  Scotland,  and  whom  it  was  the 
chief  aim  of  the  Congregation  and  of  their  allies  to  drive 
out  of  the  country.  The  siege  went  on  for  about  six 
weeks,  during  which  little  effect  seems  to  have  been  made, 
though  Knox  bears  testimony  that  "  the  patience  and 
stout  courage  of  the  Englishmen,  but  principally  of  the 
horsemen,  was  worthy  of  all  praise."  These  proceedings, 
however,  were  brought  to  a  pause  by  an  event  which 
changed  the  position  of  affairs.  The  Queen  Regent,  who, 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  293 

for  some  time,  had  been  in  declining  health,  harassed  and 
beaten  down  by  many  cares,  had  left  Leith  and  taken  up 
her  abode  in  Edinburgh  Castle  while  the  Reformers  were 
absent  from  the  capital.  In  that  fortress,  held  neutral 
by  its  captain,  in  the  small  rooms  where,  some  seven  years 
after,  her  daughter's  child  was  to  be  born,  Mary  lingered 
out  the  early  days  of  summer  :  and  in  June,  while  still 
the  English  guns  were  thundering  against  Leith,  her  new 
fortifications  resisting  with  diminished  strength,  and  her 
garrison  in  danger — died,  escaping  from  her  uneasy  burden 
of  royalty  when  everything  looked  dark  for  her  policy  and 
cause.  Many  anecdotes  of  her  sayings  and  doings  were 
current  during  her  lingering  illness,  such  as  might  easily 
be  reported  between  the  two  camps  with  more  or  less  truth. 
When  she  heard  of  the  "  Band"  made  by  the  leaders  of 
the  army  before  Leith  for  the  expulsion  of  the  strangers 
she  is  said  to  have  called  the  maledictions  of  God  upon 
them  who  counseled  her  to  persecute  the  preachers  and  to 
refuse  the  petitions  of  the  best  part  of  the  subjects  of  the 
realm.  Shut  out  from  the  countrymen  and  advisers  in 
whom  she  had  trusted,  with  the  hitherto  impartial  Lord 
Erskine  alone  at  her  ear,  adding  his  word  concerning  the 
"unjust  possessors"  who  were  to  be  driven  "  forth  of  this 
land,"  and  overcome  by  sickness,  sadness,  and  loneliness, 
this  lady,  who  had  done  her  best  to  hold  the  balance  even 
and  to  refrain  from  bloodshed,  though  she  had  little  credit 
for  it,  seems  to  have  lost  courage.  She  saw  from  her  alti- 
tude on  the  castle  rock  the  great  fire  in  Leith,  which 
probably  looked  at  first  like  the  beginning  of  its  destruc- 
tion, and  all  the  martial  bands  of  England,  and  the  Scots 
lords  and  their  followers,  lying  between  her  and  her 
friends.  After  some  ineffectual  efforts  to  communicate 
with  them  otherwise,  she  sent  for  the  Lords  Argyle,  Glen- 
cairn,  and  the  Earl  Marischal,  with  the  Lord  James,  who 
visited  her  separately,  "not  altogether,  lest  that  some 


294  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

part  of  the  Guysian  practise  had  lurked  under  the  color 
of  friendship. "  Knox's  heart  was  not  softened  by  the 
illness  and  isolation,  nor  even  by  the  regrets  and  repent- 
ance, of  the  dying  Queen.  She  consented  to  see  John 
Willock,  his  colleague,  and  after  hearing  him  "  openly  con- 
fessed that  there  was  no  salvation  but  in  and  by  the  death 
of  Jesus  Christ."  "  But  of  the  Mass  we  had  not  her  con- 
fession/' says  the.  implacable  preacher.  She  died  on  the 
9th  of  June,  worsted,  overthrown,  all  that  she  had  aimed 
at  ending  in  failure,  all  her  efforts  foiled,  leaving  those  who 
had  been  her  enemies  triumphant,  and  the  future  fate  of 
her  daughter's  kingdom  in  the  hands  of  "the  aukl  enemy," 
the  ever-dangerous  neighbor  of  Scotland.  "  God,  for  His 
good  mercy's  sake,  rid  us  from  the  rest  of  the  Guysian 
blood,"  was  the  prayer  Knox  made  over  her  grave. 

And  yet,  so  far  as  can  be  judged,  Mary  of  Guise  was  no 
persecutor  and  no  tyrant.  To  all  appearance  she  had 
honestly  intended  to  keep  peace  in  the  kingdom,  to  permit 
as  much  as  she  could  without  committing  herself  to  views 
which  she  did  not  share.  And  nothing  could  be  more 
touching  than  such  an  end  to  a  life  never  too  brilliant  or 
happy.  She  had  gone  through  many  alternations  of  glad- 
ness and  of  despair,  had  stood  bravely  by  her  sensitive 
husband  when  the  infant  sons  who  were  his  hope  had  been 
taken  one  after  another,  had  discharged,  as  faithfully  as 
circumstances  and  the  accidents  of  a  tremendous  crisis 
would  let  her,  her  duties  as  Regent.  Her  death,  lonely, 
desolate,  and  defeated,  with  no  one  near  whom  she  loved, 
to  smooth  her  passage  to  the  grave,  might  have  gained  her 
a  more  gentle  word  of  dismissal. 

Within  little  more  than  a  month  after  her  death  peace 
was  signed  ;  the  French  forces  departed,  and  the  English 
army,  not  much  more  loved  in  its  help  than  the  others  in 
their  hostility,  was  escorted  back  to  the  Border  and  safely 
got  rid  of.  On  the  19th  of  July,  all  being  thus  happily 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  295 

settled,  St.  Giles's  was  once  more  filled  with  a  crowd  of 
eager  worshippers,  "  the  haill  nobilitie  and  the  greatest 
part  of  the  Congregation/' — a  number  which  must  have 
tried  the  capacity  of  the  great  church,  large  as  it  is.  Knox 
does  not  give  his  sermon  on  the  occasion,  but  we  have  a 
very  noble  and  devout  prayer,  or  rather  thanksgiving, 
which  was  used  at  this  service,  and  in  which  though  there 
is  one  reference  to  "proud tyrants  overthrown,"  the  spirit 
of  devout  thankfulness  is  predominant.  He  tells  us,  how- 
ever, that  the  subject  of  his  discourses,  delivered  daily, 
were  the  prophecies  of  Haggai,  which  he  found  to  be 
"  proper  for  the  time."  Some  of  his  hearers,  he  informs  us, 
spoke  jestingly  of  having  now  to  "  bear  the  barrow  to  build 
the  house  of  God."  "  God  be  merciful  to  the  speaker," 
cries  the  stern  prophet,  "  for  we  fear  he  shall  have  experi- 
ence that  the  building  of  his  ain  house,  the  house  of  God 
being  despised,  shall  not  be  so  prosperous  or  of  such  firmity 
as  we  desire  it  were  " — so  dangerous  was  it  to  jest  in  the 
presence  of  one  so  tremendously  in  earnest.  The  speaker 
referred  to,  of  this,  as  of  most  of  the  other  caustic  sayings 
of  the  time,  is  said  to  have  been  Lethington. 

The  first  thing  done  by  the  Parliament  was  the  distribu- 
tion of  the  handful  of  ministers  then  existing  among  the 
districts  which  most  needed  them  ;  the  second,  the  verifi- 
cation and  establishment  of  the  Confession  of  Faith.  No 
more  curious  scene  could  have  been  than  this  momentous 
ceremony.  The  Parliament  consisted  of  all  the  nobility 
of  Scotland,  including  among  them  the  bishops  and  peers 
of  the  Church,  and  the  delegates  from  the  boroughs. 
The  Confession  was  read  article  by  article,  and  a  vote 
taken  upon  each.  Three  only  of  the  lords  voted  against 
it.  The  bishops  said  nothing.  What  their  feelings  must 
have  been,  as  they  sat  in  their  places  looking  on,  while  the 
long  array  of  the  Congregation  voted,  it  is  vain  to  attempt 
to  imagine.  There  was  nothing  the  Keformers  would 


296  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

have  liked  better  than  that  discussion  to  which  Knox  had 
vainly  bidden  his  opponents,  throwing  down  his  glove  as 
to  mortal  combat.  "  Some  of  our  ministers  were  present," 
he  says,  "  standing  upon  their  feet  ready  to  have  answered 
in  case  any  would  have  defended  the  Papistrie  and  im- 
pugned our  affirmations."  But  no  one  of  all  the  ecclesias- 
tics present  said  a  word.  The  Earl  Marischal,  when  he 
rose  in  his  turn  to  vote,  commented  upon  this  remarkable 
abstinence  with  the  straightforwardness  of  a  practical 
man.  "  It  is  long  since  I  have  had  some  favor  to  the 
truth,"  he  said,  "  and  since  I  have  had  a  suspicion  of  the 
Papistical  religion  ;  but  I  praise  my  God  this  day  has  fully 
resolved  me  in  the  one  and  the  other.  For,  seeing  that 
my  Lord  Bishops  here  present,  who  for  their  learning  can, 
and  for  the  zeal  they  should  bear  to  the  veritie  would,  I 
suppose,  gainsay  anything  that  directly  repugns  to  the 
veritie  of  God,  speaks  nothing  in  the  contraire  of  the  doc- 
trine proposed,  I  cannot  but  hold  it  to  be  the  very  truth 
of  God."  Even  this  speech  moved  the  bishops  to  no  reply. 
They  sat  silent,  perhaps  too  much  astonished  at  such  an 
extraordinary  revolution  to  say  anything  ;  perhaps  alarmed 
at  the  strength  of  the  party  against  them.  It  might  be 
that  there  was  little  learning  among  them,  though  they 
had  the  credit  of  it ;  certainly  the  arguments  which  Knox 
reports  on  several  occasions  are  inconceivably  feeble  on  the 
side  of  the  old  faith.  But  whatever  was  the  meaning 
there  they  sat  dumb,  and  looked  on  bewildered,  confounded 
while  the  new  Confession  was  voted  paragraph  by  para- 
graph, and  the  whole  scope  of  the  Scottish  constitution 
changed. 

The  next  step  was  the  abolition  of  the  mass,  an  act  by 
which  it  was  forbidden  that  any  should  either  hear  or  say 
that  office  "  or  be  present  thereat,  under  the  pain  of  con- 
fiscation of  all  their  goods  movable  and  immovable,  and 
punishing  of  their  bodies  at  the  discretion  of  the  Magis- 


UNDER  THE  QUEEN  REGENT.  297 

trates."  Another  edict  followed  abolishing  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  the  Pope  under  pain  of  "proscription,,  banishment, 
and  never  to  brook  honor,  office,  or  dignity  within  this 
realm."  "  These  and  other  things,"  says  the  Eeformer, 
"were orderly  clone  in  lawful  and  free  Parliament,"  with 
the  bishops  and  all  spiritual  lords  in  their  places  sitting 
dumb  and  making  no  sign.  The  Queen  was  at  liberty  to 
say  afterwards,  as  was  done,  that  a  Parliament  where  she 
was  not  represented  in  any  way,  either  by  viceroy  or  regent, 
where  there  was  no  exhibition  of  scepter,  sword,  or  crown, 
and  in  short  where  the  monarch  was  left  out  altogether, 
was  not  a  lawful  Parliament.  But  the  most  remarkable 
feature  of  this  strange  assembly  amid  all  the  voting  and 
"  bruit  "  is  the  dramatic  silence  of  the  State  ecclesiastic- 
al. It  is  curious  that  no  fervent  brother  should  have  been 
found  to  maintain  the  cause  of  his  faith.  But  probably 
it  was  better  policy  to  refrain.  The  extraordinary  absence 
of  logic  as  well  as  toleration  which  made  the  Reformers 
unable  to  see  what  a  lame  conclusion  this  was  after  their 
own  struggle  for  freedom,  and  that  they  were  exactly 
following  the  example  of  their  adversaries,  need  not  be 
remarked.  John  Knox  thought  it  a  quite  sufficient  an- 
swer to  say  that  the  mass  was  idolatry  and  his  own  ways  of 
thinking  absolutely  and  certainly  true  :  but  so  of  course 
has  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  done  when  the  impulse 
of  persecution  was  strongest  in  her.  There  is  one  only 
thing  to  be  said  in  favor  of  the  Reformers,  and  that  is, 
that  while  a  number  of  good  men  had  been  sacrificed  at 
the  stake  for  the  Reformed  doctrines,  no  one  was  burned 
for  saying  mass  ;  the  worst  that  happened,  notwithstand- 
ing their  fierce  enactments,  being  the  exposure  in  the 
pillory  of  a  priest.  Rotten  eggs  and  stones  are  bad 
arguments  either  in  religion  or  metaphysics,  but  not  so 
violently  bad  as  fire  and  flame. 

Thus  the  Reformed  religion  was  established  in    Scot* 


298  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

land,  and  Knox  settled  in  St.  Giles's  for  the  remainder  of 
his  life.  Whether  he  was  at  once  placed  in  the  pictur- 
esque house  with  its  paneled  rooms  and  old-fashioned  com- 
fort and  gracefulness  which  still  bears  his  name,  standing 
out  in  a  far-seeing  angle  from  which  he  could  contemplate 
the  abounding  life  of  the  High  Street,  the  great  parish  in 
which  half  his  life  was  spent,  is  not  certain  ;  but  it  was  a 
most  fit  and  natural  lodging  for  the  minister  of  St.  Giles's. 
And  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  with  very  few  intervals,  all  the 
stream  of  public  life  in  Scotland  flowed  about  this  dwell- 
ing. His  importance  in  every  national  question,  the  con- 
tinual references  made  to  him,  the  appeals  addressed  to 
him  by  monarch  and  noble,  as  well  as  by  burghers  and 
retainers,  show  better  than  any  statement  the  unique 
position  he  held.  He  was  at  this  time  a  man  of  fifty-five. 
His  Marjory  Bowes,  never  I  think  mentioned  but  by  this 
name,  the  "  weill  belovit  sister "  who  is  associated  with 
so  much  of  his  life  without  one  trace  of  human  identity 
ever  stealing  through  the  mist  that  envelops  her,  was 
dead;  disappearing  noiseless  into  the  grave,  where  it 
would  seem  her  mother,  Mrs.  Bowes,  the  religious  hypo- 
chondriac who  had  required  so  many  solemn  treatises  in 
the  shape  of  letters  to  comfort  her,  had  preceded  her 
daughter.  Two  boys,  the  sons  of  Marjory,  were  with 
their  father  in  these  paneled  rooms.  They  both  grew  up, 
but  not  to  any  distinction  ;  he  did  not  spare  the  rod  as  ap- 
pears in  an  after  statement,  but  loved  not  to  see  them  in 
tears,  and  probably  was  a  fond  father  enough.  All  these 
things,  however,  are  too  petty  to  find  any  record  in  what 
he  says  of  himself. 


KNOX^S  HOUSE,  HIGH  STREET.-Page  298. 


CHAPTER  II. 

UNDER   QUEEN    MARY. 

WHEN"  the  Parliament  which  did  these  great  things  was 
over,  the  newly-established  Kirk  began  to  labor  at  its  own 
development,  supplying  as  far  as  was  possible  ministers  to 
the  more  important  centers.  There  were  but  thirteen 
available  in  all  according  to  the  lists  of  those  appointed  to 
independent  charges  :  and  though  they  no  doubt  were 
supplemented  by  various  of  the  laymen  who  had  already 
been  authorized  to  read  prayers  and  preach  in  the  absence 
of  other  qualified  persons — one  of  whom,  Erskine  of  Dun, 
became  one  of  the  superintendents  of  the  new  organization 
— the  clerical  element  must  have  been  very  small  in  com- 
parison with  the  number  of  the  faithful  and  the  power  and 
influence  accorded  to  the  preachers.  When  these  indis- 
pensable arrangements  had  been  made  the  chiefs  of  the 
Reformers  began  to  draw  up  the  Book  of  Discipline, — a 
compendium  of  the  Constitution  of  the  Church  establishing 
her  internal  order,  the  provisions  to  be  made  for  her,  her 
powers  in  dealing  with  the  people  in  general,  and  special 
sinners  in  particular, — as  the  Confession  of  Faith  was  of 
her  doctrines  and  belief.  But  this  was  a  much  harder 
morsel  for  the  lords  to  swallow.  Many  a  stout  spirit  of 
the  Congregation  had  held  manfully  for  the  Reformed 
faith  and  escaped  Avith  delight  from  the  exactions  and 
corruptions  of  the  Romish  clergy  who  yet  had  not  schooled 

299 


300  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

his  mind  to  give  up  the  half  of  his  living,  the  fat  corn- 
mendatorship  or  priory  which  had  been  obtained  for  him 
by  the  highest  influence,  and  upon  which  he  had  calcu- 
lated as  a  lawful  provision  for  himself  and  his  family. 
One  would  have  supposed  that  the  meddling  and  keen 
supervision  of  every  act  of  life,  which  was  involved  in  the 
Church's  stern  claim  of  discipline.,  would  also  have  alarmed 
and  revolted  a  body  of  men  not  all  conformed  to  the 
purest  models  of  morality.  But  this  seems  to  have 
troubled  them  little  in  comparison  with  the  necessity  of 
giving  up  their  share  of  Church  lands  and  ecclesiastical 
wealth  generally,  in  order  to  provide  for  the  preachers, 
and  the  needs  of  education  and  charity.  "  Everything 
that  repugned  to  their  corrupt  affections  was  termed  in 
their  mockage  'devout  imaginations/"  says  Knox  :  and 
it  was  no  doubt  Lethington  f rorn  whose  quiver  this  winged 
word  came,  with  so  many  more. 

A  number  of  the  lords,  however,  subscribed  to  the  Book 
of  Discipline  though  with  reluctance,  but  some,  and 
among  them  several  of  the  most  staunch  supporters  of 
the  Reformation,  held  back.  Knox  had  himself  been 
placed  in  an  independent  position  by  his  congregation, 
the  citizens  of  Edinburgh,  and  he  was  therefore  more  free 
to  press  stipulations  which  in  no  way  could  be  supposed 
to  bo  for  his  own  interest  :  but  he  evidently  had  not  taken 
into  account  the  strong  human  disposition  to  keep  what 
has  been  acquired  and  the  extreme  practical  difficulty  of 
persuading  men  to  a  sacrifice  of  property.  In  other  matters 
too  there  were  drawbacks  not  sufficiently  realized.  There 
can  be  no  grander  ideal  than  that  of  a  theocracy,  a  com- 
monwealth entirely  ruled  and  guided  by  sacred  law  :  but 
when  it  is  brought  to  practise  even  by  the  most  enlight- 
ened, and  men's  lives  are  subjected  to  the  keen  inspection 
of  an  ecclesiastical  board  new  to  its  functions,  and  eager 
for  perfection,  which  does  not  disdain  the  most  minute 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  301 

detail,  nor  to  listen  to  the  wildest  rumors,  the  high  ideal 
is  apt  to  fall  into  the  most  intolerable  petty  tyranny. 
And  notwithstanding  the  high  exaltation  of  many  minds, 
and  the  wonderful  intellectual  and  emotional  force  which 
was  expended  every  day  in  that  pulpit  of  St.  Giles's,  sway- 
ing as  with  great  blasts  and  currents  of  religious  feeling 
the  minds  of  the  great  congregation  that  filled  the  aisles 
of  the  cathedral,  it  is  to  be  doubted  whether  Edinburgh 
was  a  very  agreeable  habitation  in  those  days  of  early 
fervor,  when  the  Congregation  occupied  the  chief  place 
everywhere,  and  men's  thoughts  were  not  as  yet  distracted 
by  the  coming  of  the  Queen.  During  this  period  there 
occurs  a  curious  and  most  significant  story  of  an  Edinburgh 
mob  and  riot,  which  might  be  placed  by  the  side  of  the 
famous  Porteous  mob  of  later  days,  and  which  throws  a 
somewhat  lurid  light  upon  the  record  of  this  most  trium- 
phant moment  of  the  early  Reformation.  The  Papists  and 
bisho-ps,  Knox  says,  had  stirred  up  the  rasckall  multitude 
to  "  make  a  Robin  Hood."  We  may  remark  that  he  never 
changes  his  name  for  the  mob,  of  which  he  is  always  sternly 
contemptuous.  When  it  destroys  convents  and  altars  he 
flatters  it  (though  he  acknowledges  sometimes  a  certain 
ease  in  finding  the  matter  thus  settled  for  him)  with  no 
better  a  title.  He  was  no  democrat  though  the  most  in- 
dependent of  citizens.  The  vulgar  crowd  had  at  no  time 
any  attraction  for  him. 

It  seems  no  very  great  offense  to  "  make  a  Robin 
Hood  "  :  but  it  is  evident  this  popular  festival  had  been 
always  an  occasion  of  rioting  and  disorderly  behavior 
since  it  was  condemned  by  various  acts  of  previous  Parlia- 
ments. It  will  strike  the  reader,  however,  with  dismay 
and  horror  to  find  that  one  of  the  ringleaders  having  been 
taken,  he  was  condemned  to  be  hanged,  and  a  gibbet 
erected  near  the  Cross  to  carry  this  sentence  into  execu- 
tion. The  Diurnal  of  Occurrents  gives  by  far  the  fullest 


302  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

and  most  graphic  account  of  what  followed.     The  trades 
rose  in  anxious  tumult,  at  once  angry  and  terrified. 

"  The  craftsmen  made  great  solicitations  at  the  hands  of  the 
provost,  John  Knox  minister,  and  the  baillie,  to  have  gotten 
him  relieved,  promising  that  he  would  do  anything  possible  to 
be  done  saving  his  life — who  would  do  nothing  but  have  him 
hanged.  And  when  the  time  of  the  poor  man's  hanging  ap- 
proached, and  that  the  poor  man  was  come  to  the  gibbet  with  the 
ladder  upon  which  the  said  cordwainer  should  have  been  hanged, 
the  craftsman's  children  (apprentices?;  and  servants  pass  to 
armour  ;  and  first  they  housed  Alexander  Guthrie  and  the  pro- 
vost and  baillies  in  the  said  Alexander's  writing  booth,  and  syne 
come  down  again  to  the  Cross,  and  dang  down  the  gibbet  and 
brake  it  in  pieces,  and  thereafter  past  to  the  tolbooth  which  was 
then  steekit  :  and  when  they  could  not  apprehend  the  keys  there- 
of they  brought  hammers  and  dang  up  the  said  tolbooth  door 
perforce,  the  provost,  baillies,  and  others  looking  thereupon  ; 
and  when  the  said  door  was  broken  up  ane  part  of  them  p;is-sed 
in  the  same,  and  not  only  brought  the  said  condemned  cord- 
wainer forth  of  the  said  tolbooth,  but  also  all  the  remaining 
persons  being  thereintill :  and  this  done  they  passed  up  the  Hie 
gate,  to  have  past  forth  at  the  Nether  Bow." 

The  shutting  up  of  the  provost  and  bailie  in  the  "  writ- 
ing booth" — one  of  the  wooden  structures,  no  doubt, 
which  hung  about  St.  Giles's  as  around  so  many  other 
cathedrals,  where  a  crowd  of  little  industries  were  col- 
lected, about  the  skirts  of  the  great  church,  the  universal 
center  of  life — has  something  grimly  comic  in  it,  worthy 
of  an  Edinburgh  mob.  Guthrie's  booth  must  have  been 
at  the  west  end,  facing  the  Tolbooth,  and  the  impotence 
of  the  authorities,  thus  compelled  to  look  on  while  appren- 
tices and  young  men  in  their  leather  aprons,  armed  with 
the  long  spears  which  were  kept  ready  in  all  the  shops  for 
immediate  use,  broke  down  the  prison  doors  with  their 
hammers  and  let  the  prisoners  go  free — must  have  added 
a  delightful  zest  to  the  triumph  of  the  rebels,  who  had 
so  lately  pleaded  humbly  before  them  for  the  victim's  life, 


UNDER  QUEEN  MAEY.  303 

but  in  vain.  The  provost  was  Archibald  Douglas  of  Kil- 
spindie,  a  name  little  suitable  for  such  a  dilemma.  When 
the  rude  mob,  with  their  shouts  and  cries,  had  turned 
their  backs,  the  imprisoned  authorities  were  able  to 
break  out  and  take  shelter  in  the  empty  Tolbooth  ; 
but  when  the  crowd  surged  up  again,  finding  the  gates 
closed  at  the  Nether  Bow,  into  the  High  Street,  a  scuffle 
arose,  a  new  "  Clear  the  Causeway,"  though  the  defenders 
of  order  kept  within  the  walls  of  the  Tolbooth,  and  thence 
shot  at  the  rioters,  who  returned  their  fire  with  hagbuts  and 
stones — from  three  in  the  afternoon  till  eight  o'clock  in  the 
evening,  "  and  never  ane  man  of  the  town  stirred  to  de- 
fend their  provost  and  baillies."  Finally  the  Constable 
of  the  Castle  was  sent  for,  who  made  peace,  the  craftsmen 
only  laying  down  their  arms  on  condition  not  only  of  ab- 
solute immunity  from  punishment  for  the  day's  doings, 
but  with  an  undertaking  that  all  previous  actions  against 
them  should  be  stopped,  and  their  masters  made  to  receive 
them  again  without  grudge  or  punishment — clearly  a 
complete  victory  for  the  rioters.  This  extorted  guarantee 
was  proclaimed  at  the  Cross  at  nine  o'clock  on  the  linger- 
ing July  night,  in  the  soft  twilight  which  departs  so  un- 
willingly from  northern  skies  ;  and  a  curious  scene  it 
must  have  been,  with  the  magistrates  still  cooped  up  be- 
hind the  barred  windows  of  the  Tolbooth,  the  triumph  of 
the  mob  filling  the  streets  with  uproar,  and  spectators  no 
doubt  at  all  the  windows,  story  upon  story,  looking  on, 
glad,  can  we  doubt  ?  of  something  to  see  which  was  riot 
without  being  bloodshed.  John  Knox  adds  an  explanation 
of  his  conduct  in  his  narrative  of  the  occurrence,  which 
somewhat  softens  our  feeling  towards  him.  He  refused 
to  ask  for  the  life  of  the  unlucky  reveler  not  without  a 
a  reason,  such  as  it  was. 

"Who  did  answer  that  he  had  so  oft  solicited  in  their  favour 
that  his  own  conscience  accused  him  that  they  used  his  labours 


304  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

for  no  other  end  but  to  be  a  patron  to  their  impiety.  For  he  had 
before  made  intercession  for  William  Harlow,  James  Fussell,  and 
others  that  were  convict  of  the  former  tumult.  They  proudly 
said  '  that  if  it  was  not  stayed  both  he  and  the  Baillies  should 
repent  it.'  Whereto  he  answered  "  He  would  not  hurt  his  con- 
science for  any  fear  of  man.'  " 

It  Was  not  perhaps  the  fault  of  Knox  or  his  influence 
that  a  man  should  be  sentenced  to  be  hanged  for  the  rough 
horseplay  of  a  Robin  Hood  performance,  or  because  he  was 
"Lord  of  Inobedience  "  or  "Abbot  of  Unreason,"  like 
Adam  Woodcock  ;  but  the  extraordinary  exaggeration  of 
a  society  which  could  think  such  a  punishment  reasonable 
is  very  curious. 

Equally  curious  is  the  incidental  description  of  how 
"  the  Papists"  crowded  into  Edinburgh  after  this,  appar- 
ently swaggering  about  the  streets,  "  and  began  to  brag 
as  that  they  would  have  defaced  the  Protestants."  When 
the  Reformers  perceived  the  audacity  of  their  opponents, 
they  replied  by  a  similar  demonstration  ;  "  the  brethren 
assembled  together  and  went  in  such  companies,  and  that 
in  peaceable  manner,  that  the  Bishops  and  their  bands 
forsook  the  causeway."  Many  a  strange  sight  must  the 
spectators  at  the  high  windows,  the  old  women  at  their 
"stairheads,"  from  which  they  inspected  everything, 
have  seen — the  bishops  one  day,  the  ministers  another, 
and  John  Knox,  were  it  shade  or  shine,  crossing  the  High 
Street  with  his  staff  every  day  to  St.  Giles's,  and  seeing 
everything,  whatever  occurred  on  either  side  of  him, 
with  those  keen  eyes. 

This  tumult,  however,  was  almost  the  end  of  the  un- 
disturbed reign  of  the  Congregation.  In  August,  Mary 
Stewart,  with  all  the  pomp  that  her  poor  country  could 
muster  for  her,  arrived  in  a  fog,  as  so  many  lesser  people 
have  done  on  her  native  shores  ;  and  henceforward  the 
balance  of  power  was  strangely  disturbed.  The  gravest 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  305 

of  the  lords  owned  a  certain  divergence  from  the  hither- 
to unbroken  claims  of  religious  duty  and  a  hundred  soft- 
nesses and  forbearances  stole  in,  which  were  far  from  being 
according  to  the  Reformer's  views.  The  new  reign  began 
with  a  startling  test  of  loyalty  to  conviction,  which  ap- 
parently had  not  been  anticipated,  and  which  came  with 
a  shock  upon  the  feelings  even  of  those  who  loved  the 
Queen  most.  The  first  Sunday  which  Mary  spent  in 
Holyrood,  preparations  were  made  for  mass  in  the  chapel, 
probably  with  no  foresight  of  the  effect  likely  to  be  pro- 
duced. Upon  this  a  sudden  tumult  arose  in  the  very  ante- 
chambers. "  Shall  that  idol  be  suffered  again  to  take  its 
place  in  this  realm  ?  It  shall  not,"  even  the  courtiers  said 
to  each  other.  The  Master  of  Lindsay,  that  grim  Lindsay 
of  the  Byres,  so  well  known  among  Mary's  adversaries 
standing  with  some  gentlemen  of  Fife  in  the  courtyard,  de- 
clared that  "  the  idolatrous  priests  should  die  the  death.'* 
In  this  situation  of  danger  the  Lord  James,  afterward  so 
well  known  as  Murray,  the  Queen's  brother,  put  himself 
in  the  breach.  He  "  took  upon  him  to  keep  the  door  of 
the  chapel."  There  was  no  man  in  Scotland  more  true 
to  the  faith,  and  none  more  esteemed  in  the  Congregation. 
He  excused  himself  after  for  this  act  of  true  charity  by 
saying  that  his  object  was  to  prevent  any  Scot  from  enter- 
ing while  the  mass  was  proceeding  :  but  Knox  divined 
that  it  was  to  protect  the  priest,  and  preserve  silence  and 
sanctity  for  the  service,  though  he  disapproved  it,  that 
Murray  thus  intervened.  The  Reformers  did  not  appre- 
ciate the  good  brother's  devotion.  Knox  declared  that  he 
was  more  afraid  of  one  mass  than  of  ten  thousand  armed 
men,  and  the  arches  of  St.  Giles's  rang  with  his  alarm,  his 
denunciation,  his  solemn  warning.  He  recounts,  however, 
how  by  degrees  this  feeling  softened  among  those  who  fre- 
quented the  Court.  "There  were  Protestants  found,"  he 
says,  "  that  were  not  ashamed  at  tables  and  other  open 


306  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

places  to  ask  '  Why  may  not  the  Queen  have  her  mass, 
and  the  form  of  her  religion  ?  What  can  that  hurt  us, 
or  our  religion  ? '  until  by  degrees  this  indulgence  rose  to 
a  warmer  and  stronger  sentiment.  '  The  Queen's  mass 
and  her  priests  will  we  maintain  :  this  hand  and  this 
rapier  shall  fight  in  their  defense."  One  can  well  im- 
agine the  chivalrous  youth  or  even  the  grave  baron,  with 
generous  blood  in  his  veins,  who  with  hand  upon  the  hilt 
of  the  too  ready  sword,  would  dare  even  Knox's  frown 
with  this  outcry  ;  and  in  these  days  it  is  the  champion  of 
the  Queen  and  of  her  conscience  who  secures  our  sympathy. 
But  the  Keformer  had  at  least  the  cruel  force  of  logic  on 
his  side,  the  severe  logic  which  decrees  the  St.  Barthol- 
omew. To  stamp  out  the  previous  faith  was  the  only 
policy  on  either  side. 

Then,  as  now,  we  think,  there  are  few  even  of  those 
who  are  forced  to  believe  that  the  after-accusations  against 
Queen  Mary  were  but  too  clearly  proved,  who  will  not 
look  back  with  a  compunctious  tenderness  upon  that  early 
and  bright  beginning  of  her  career.  So  strong  a  sense  of 
remorseful  pity,  and  the  intolerableness  of  such  a  fate, 
overcomes  the  spectator,  that  he  who  stands  by  and  looks 
on,  knowing  all  that  is  coming,  can  scarcely  help  feeling 
that  even  he,  unborn,  might  send  a  shout  from  out  the 
dim  futurity  to  warn  her.  She  came  with  so  much  hope, 
so  eagerly,  to  her  new  kingdom,  so  full  of  pleasure  and 
interest  and  readiness  to  hear  and  see,  and  to  be  pleased 
with  everything — even  John  Knox,  that  pestilent  preacher, 
of  whom  she  must  have  heard  so  much  ;  he  who  had 
written  the  book  against  women  which  naturally  made 
every  woman  indignant  yet  curious,  keenly  desirous  to 
see  him,  to  question  him,  to  put  him  on  his  defense.  I 
think  great  injustice  has  been  done  to  both  in  the  repeated 
interviews  in  which  the  sentimentalist  perceives  nothing 
but  a  harsh  priest  upbraiding  a  lovely  woman  and  making 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  307 

her  weep  ;  and  the  sage  of  sterner  mettle  sees  an  almost 
sublime  sight,  a  prophet  unmoved  by  the  meretricious 
charms  of  a  queen  of  hearts.  Neither  of  these  exaggerated 
views  will  survive,  we  believe,  a  simple  reading  of  the  in- 
terviews themselves,  especially  in  Knox's  account  of  them. 
He  is  not  merciless  nor  Mary  silly.  One  would  almost 
fancy  that  she  liked  the  encounter  which  matched  her 
own  quick  wit  against  the  tremendous  old  man  with  his 
"  blast  against  women/'  his  deep-set  fiery  eyes,  his  sovereign 
power  to  move  and  influence  the  people.  He  was 
absolutely  a  novel  personage  to  Mary  :  their  conversa- 
tions are  like  a  quick  glancing  of  polished  weapons — his, 
too  heavy  for  her  young  brilliancy  of  speech  and  nature, 
crushing  with  ponderous  force  the  light-flashing  darts 
of  question  ;  but  she,  no  way  daunted,  comprehending 
him,  meeting  full  in  the  face  the  prodigious  thrust.  A 
brave  young  creature  of  twenty  confronting  the  great 
Reformer,  in  single  combat  so  to  speak,  and  retiring  from 
the  field,  not  triumphant  indeed,  but  with  all  the  honors 
of  war,  and  a  blessing  half  extorted  from  him  at  the  end, 
she  secures  a  sympathy  which  the  weaker  in  such  a  fight 
does  not  always  obtain,  but  which  we  cannot  deny  to  her 
in  her  bright  intelligence  and  brave  defense  of  her  faith. 
When  his  friends  asked  him,  after  this  first  interview, 
what  he  thought  of  the  Queen,  he  gave  her  credit  for  "a, 
proud  mind,  a  crafty  wit,  and  an  indurate  heart."  But 
curiously  enough,  though  the  effect  is  not  unprecedented, 
the  faithfulness  of  genius  baulks  the  prejudices  of  the 
writer,  and  there  is  nowhere  a  brighter  or  more  genial 
representation  of  Mary  than  that  which  is  to  be  found  in 
a  history  full  of  abuse  of  her  and  vehement  vituperation. 
She  is  "mischievous  Marie,"  a  vile  woman,  a  shameless 
deceiver  ;  every  bad  name  that  can  be  coined  by  a  medieval 
fancy,  not  unlearned  in  such  violences  ;  but  when  he  is 
face  to  face  with  this  woman  of  sin  it  is  not  in  Knox  to 


308  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

give  other  than  a  true  picture,  and  that — apart  from  the 
grudging  acknowledgment  of  her  qualities  and  indication 
of  evil  intentions  divined — is  almost  always  an  attractive 
one. 

He,  too,  shows  far  from  badly  in  the  encounter.  In 
this  case,  as  in  so  many  other,  the  simple  record  denuded 
of  all  gloss  gives  at  once  a  much  better  and  we  do  not 
doubt  much  more  true  representation  of  the  two  remark- 
able persons  involved,  than  when  loaded  with  explanations, 
either  from  other  people  or  from  themselves.  It  cannot 
be  said  that  Knox  is  just  to  Mary  in  the  opinions  he  ex- 
presses of  her,  as  he  is  in  the  involuntary  picture  which 
his  inalienable  truthfulness  to  fact  forces  from  him.  It 
must  be  remembered,  however,  that  his  history  was  written 
after  the  disastrous  story  had  advanced  nearly  to  its  end, 
and  when  the  stamp  of  crime  (as  Knox  and  so  many  more 
believed)  had  thrown  a  sinister  shade  upon  all  her  previous 
life.  Looking  back  upon  the  preliminaries  which  led 
to  such  wild  confusion  and  misery,  it  was  not  unnatural 
that  a  man  so  absolute  in  judgment  should  perceive  in 
the  most  innocent  bygone  details  indications  of  depravity. 
It  is  one  (whether  good  or  bad  we  will  not  say)  consequence 
of  the  use  and  practise  of  what  may,  to  use  a  modern  word, 
be  called  society,  that  men  are  less  disposed  to  believe  in 
the  existence  of  monstrous  and  hideous  evil,  that  they  do 
not  attach  an  undue  importance  to  trifles  nor  take  levity 
for  vice.  Knox  had  all  the  limitations  of  mind  natural 
to  his  humble  origin,  and  his  profession,  and  the  special 
disadvantage  which  must  attach  to  the  habit  of  investi- 
gating by  means  of  popular  accusation  and  gossip,  prob- 
lematical cases  of  immorality.  He  was  able  to  believe 
that  the  Queen,  when  retired  into  her  private  apartments 
with  her  ladies,  indulged  in  "skipping  not  very  comelie 
for  honest  women/'  and  that  all  kinds  of  brutal  orgies 
went  on  at  court — incidents  certainly  unnecessary  to  prove 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  309 

her  after-guilt,  and  entirely  out  of  keeping  with  all  the 
surrounding  associations,  as  if  Holyrood  had  been  a 
change-house  in  "  Christ  Kirk  on  the  green."  It  did  not 
offend  his  sense  of  the  probable  or  likely  that  such  in- 
sinuations should  be  made,  and  he  recorded  them  ac- 
cordingly not  as  insinuations  but  as  facts,  in  a  manner 
only  possible  to  that  conjoint  force  of  ignorance  and  scorn 
which  continually  makes  people  of  one  class  misconceive 
and  condemn  those  of  another.  Dancing  was  in  those 
days  the  most  decorous  of  performances  :  but  if  Mary  had 
been  proved  to  have  danced  a  stately  pas  seul  in  a  minuet, 
it  was  to  Knox,  who  knew  no  better,  as  if  she  had  in- 
dulged in  the  wildest  bobbing  of  a  country  fair — nay,  he 
would  probably  have  thought  the  high  skipping  rural 
performer  by  far  the  more  innocent  of  the  two. 

This  is  but  an  instance  of  many  similar  misconceptions 
with  which  the  color  of  the  picture  is  heightened.  An 
impassioned  spectator  looking  on  with  a  foregone  conclu- 
sion in  his  mind,  never  apparently  able  to  convince  him- 
self that  vice  does  not  always  wear  her  trappings,  but  is 
probably  much  more  dangerous  when  she  observes  the 
ordinary  modesties  of  outward  life,  is  always  apt  to  be 
misled  in  this  way.  The  state  of  affairs  in  which  a  great 
body  of  public  men,  not  only  ministers,  but  noble  men  and 
worthy  persons  of  every  degree,  could  personally  address 
the  Queen,  and  that  almost  in  the  form  of  an  accusation 
couched  in  the  most  vehement  terms,  because  of  a  libertine 
raid  made  by  a  few  young  gallants  in  the  night,  on  a  house 
supposed  to  be  inhabited  by  a  woman  of  damaged  character, 
is  inconceivable  to  us — a  certain  parochial  character,  a  pet- 
tiness as  of  a  village,  thus  comes  into  the  great  national 
struggle.  The  Queen's  uncle,  who  had  accompanied  her 
to  Scotland,  was  one  of  the  young  men  concerned,  along 
with  Earl  Bothwell  and  another.  "  The  horror  of  this 
fact  and  the  raretie  of  it  commoved  all  godlie  hearts,"  said 


310  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

Knox — and  yet  there  was  no  lack  of  scandals  in  that  age 
notwithstanding  the  zeal  of  purification.  When  the 
courtiers,  alarmed  by  this  comminatioti  (in  which  every 
kind  of  spiritual  vengeance  upon  the  realm  and  its  rulers 
was  denounced),  asked,  "Who  durst  avow  it  ?"  the  grim 
Lindsay  replied,  "  A  thousand  gentlemen  within  Edin- 
burgh." Yet  if  Edinburgh  was  free  from  disorders  of  this 
kind,  it  was  certainly  far  from  free  of  other  contentions. 
The  proclamations  from  the  Cross  during  Mary's  brief 
reign  give  us  the  impression  of  being  almost  ceaseless. 
The  Queen's  Majestic  proclaimed  by  the  heralds  now  one 
decree,  now  another,  with  a  crowd  hastily  forming  to  every 
blast  of  the  trumpet :  and  the  little  procession  in  their 
tabards,  carrying  a  moving  patch  of  bright  color  and 
shining  ornament  up  all  the  long  picturesque  line  of  street, 
both  without  and  within  the  city  gates,  was  of  almost  daily 
occurrence.  It  was  some  compensation  at  least  for  the 
evils  of  an  uncertain  rule  to  have  that  delightful  pageant 
going  on  forever.  Sometimes  there  would  arise  a  protest, 
and  one  of  the  lords,  all  splendid  in  his  jeweled  bonnet, 
would  step  forward  to  the  Lord  Lyon  and  "  take  instru- 
ments and  crave  extracts,"  according  to  the  time-honored 
jargon  of  law  ;  while  from  his  corner  window  perhaps 
John  Knox  looked  out,  his  eager  pen  already  drawn  to 
answer,  the  tumultuous  impassioned  sentences  rushing  to 
his  lips. 

When  it  was  found  that  no  punishment  was  to  follow 
that  "  enormitie  and  fearful  attemptal,"  but  that  "  nightly 
masking  "  and  riotous  behavior  continued,  some  of  the 
lords  took  the  matter  in  their  own  hands,  and  a  great  band 
known  as  "my  Lord  Duke  his  friends"  took  the  cause- 
way to  keep  order  in  the  town.  When  the  news  was 
brought  to  EarlBothwell  that  the  Ilamiltons  were  "  upon 
the  gait,"  there  were  vows  made  on  his  side  that  "  the 
Hamiltons  should  be  driven  not  only  out  of  the  town  but 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  311 

out  of  the  country."  The  result,  however,  of  this  sudden 
surging  up  of  personal  feud  to  strengthen  the  bitterness 
of  the  quarrel  between  license  and  repression,  was  that 
the  final  authorities  were  roused  to  make  the  fray  an  affair 
of  State  ;  and  Murray  and  Huntly  were  sent  from  the 
abbey  with  their  companies  to  stop  the  impending  struggle. 
These  sudden  night  tumults,  the  din  of  the  struggle  and 
clashing  of  the  swords,  the  gleaming  torches  of  the  force 
who  came  to  keep  order,  were  sights  very  familiar  to  Edin- 
burgh. But  this  fray  brings  upon  us,  prominent  in  the 
midst  of  the  nightly  brawls,  the  dark  and  ominous  figure 
whose  trace  in  history  is  so  black,  so  brief,  and  so  disas- 
trous— once  only  had  he  appeared  clearly  before,  when  he 
intercepted  in  the  interest  of  the  Queen  Eegent  the  money 
sent  from  England  to  the  Congregation.  Xow  it  is  in  a 
very  different  guise.  Both  well,  as  probably  the  ringleader 
in  the  disorders  of  the  young  nobles,  was  apparently  the 
only  person  punished.  He  was  confined  to  his  own  lodg- 
ing, and  it  was  apparently  at  this  time  that  he  sought  the 
intervention  of  Knox,  who  seems  to  have  been  the  universal 
referee.  Knox  gladly  granted  his  prayer  for  an  interview, 
which  was  brought  him  by  a  citizen  of  Edinburgh,  with 
whom  the  riotous  Earl  had  dealings.  ISTo  doubt  the  Re- 
former expected  a  new  convert  ;  and  indeed  Bothwell  had 
his  preliminary  shrift  to  make,  and  confessed  his  repent- 
ance of  his  previous  action  against  the  Congregation,  which 
he  said  was  done  "by  the  entysements  of  the  Queen  Re- 
gent." But  the  Earl's  object  was  not  entirely  of  this 
pious  kind.  He  informed  Knox  that  he  had  offended  the 
Earl  of  Arran,  and  that  he  was  most  anxious  to  recover 
that  gentleman's  favor  on  the  ground,  apparently,  that  a 
feud  with  so  great  a  personage  compelled  him  to  maintain 
a  great  retinue,  "  a  number  of  wicked  and  unprofitable 
me-n,  to  the  utter  destruction  of  my  living." 

Knox  received  with  unusual  favor  this  petition  for  his 


312  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

intervention,  and  for  (to  the  reader)  an  unexpected  reason  : 
"Albeit  to  this  hour,"  he  said,  "it  hath  not  chanced  me 
to  speak  to  your  lordship  face  to  face,  yet  have  I  borne 
a  good  mind  to  your  honor,  and  have  been  sorry  in  my 
heart  of  the  troubles  that  I  have  heard  you  to  be  involved 
in.  For,  my  lord,  my  grandfather,  goodsire  and  father, 
have  served  your  lordship's  predecessors,  and  some  of 
them  have  died  under  their  standards  ;  and  this  is  part  of 
the  obligation  of  our  Scottish  kindness."  He  goes  on  nat- 
urally to  exhort  his  visitor  to  complete  repentance  and 
"perfyte  reconciliation  with  God  ;"  but  ends  by  promis- 
ing his  good  offices  for  the  wished -for  reconcilation  with 
man.  In  this  mediation  Knox  was  successful  :  and  as  the 
extraordinary  chance  would  have  it,  it  was  at  the  Kirk  of 
Field,  doomed  to  such  dismal  association  forever  with 
Bothwell's  name,  that  the  meeting  with  Arran,  under  the 
auspices  of  Knox — strange  conjunction  ! — took  place,  and 
friendship  was  made  between  the  two  enemies.  Knox  made 
them  a  little  oration  as  they  embraced  each  other,  exhorting 
them  to  "  study  that  amitie  may  ensure  all  former  offenses 
being  forgotten." 

This  is  strange  enough  when  one  remembers  the  terri- 
ble tragedy  which  was  soon  to  burst  these  walls  asunder  ; 
but  stranger  still  was  to  follow.  The  two  adversaries 
thus  reconciled  came  to  the  sermon  together  next  day, 
and  there  was  much  rejoicing  over  the  new  penitent. 
But  four  days  after,  Arran,  with  a  distracted  counte- 
nance, followed  Knox  home  after  the  preaching,  and 
calling  out  "  I  am  treacherously  betrayed,"  burst  into 
tears.  He  then  narrated  with  many  expressions  of  horror 
the  cause  of  his  distress.  Bothwell  had  made  a  proposal 
to  him  to  carry  off  the  Queen  and  place  her  in  Dunkeld 
Castle  in  Arran's  hands  (who  was  known  to  be  half  dis- 
traught with  love  of  Mary),  and  to  kill  Murray,  Lething- 
ton,  and  the  others  that  now  misguided  her,  so  that  he 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  313 

and  Arran  should  rule  alone.  The  agitation  of  the  un- 
fortunate young  man,  his  wild  looks,  his  conviction  that 
he  was  himself  ruined  and  shamed  forever,  seem  to  have 
enlightened  Knox  at  once  as  to  the  state  of  his  mind. 
Arran  sent  letters  all  over  the  country — to  his  father,  to 
the  Queen,  to  Murray — repeating  this  strange  tale,  but 
soon  betrayed  by  the  endless  delusions  which  took  posses- 
sion of  him  that  his  mind  was  entirely  disordered.  The 
story  remains  one  of  those  historical  puzzles  which  it  is 
impossible  to  solve.  Was  there  truth  in  it — a  premature 
betrayal  of  the  scheme  which  afterwards  made  Bothwell 
infamous  ?  did  this  wild  suggestion  drive  Arran's  mind, 
never  too  strong,  off  the  balance  ?  or  was  it  some  strange 
insight  of  madness  into  the  other's  dark  spirit  ?  These 
are  questions  which  no  one  will  ever  be  able  to  answer. 
It  seems  to  have  caused  much  perturbation  in  the  Court 
and  its  surroundings  for  the  moment,  but  is  not,  strangely 
enough,  ever  referred  to  when  events  quicken  and  Both- 
well  shows  himself  as  he  was  in  the  madman's  dream. 

Tbe  chief  practical  question  on  which  Knox's  mind  and 
his  vigorous  pen  were  engaged  during  this  early  period  of 
Mary's  reign  was  the  all-important  question  to  the  country 
and  Church  of  the  provision  for  the  maintenance  of  min- 
isters, for  education,  and  for  the  poor — the  revenues,  in 
short,  of  the  newly-established  Church,  these  three  objects 
being  conjoined  together  as  belonging  to  the  spiritual 
dominion.  The  proposal  made  in  the  Book  of  Discipline, 
ratified  and  confirmed  by  the  subscription  of  the  lords,  was 
that  tbe  tithes  and  other  revenues  of  the  old  Church,  apart 
from  all  the  tyrannical  additions  which  had  ground  the 
poor  (the  Uppermost  Cloth,  Corpse  present,  Pasch  offer- 
ings, etc.),  should  be  given  over  to  the  Congregation  for 
the  combined  uses  above  described.  This  in  principle  had 
been  conceded,  though  in  practice  it  was  extremely  hard 
to  extract  those  revenues  from  the  strong  secular  hands 


314  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

into  which  in  many  cases  they  had  fallen,  and  which  had 
not  even  ceased  to  exact  the  Corpse  present,  etc.  The 
Reformers  had  strongly  urged  the  necessity  of  having  the 
Book  of  Discipline  ratified  by  the  Queen  on  her  arrival  ; 
but  this  suggestion  had  been  set  aside  even  by  the  severest 
of  the  lords  as  oat  of  place  for  the  moment.  To  such  en- 
lightened critics  as  Lethington  the  whole  book  was  a  de- 
vout imagination,  a  dream  of  theorists  never  to  be  realised. 
The  Church,  however,  with  Knox  at  her  head,  was  bent 
upon  securing  this  indispensable  provision,  though  it  may 
well  be  supposed  that  now,  with  not  only  the  commenda- 
tors  and  pensioners  but  the  bishops  themselves  and  other 
ecclesiastical  functionaries,  inspirited  and  encouraged  by 
the  Queen's  favor,  and  hoping  that  the  good  old  times  might 
yet  come  back,  it  was  more  difficult  than  ever  to  get  a 
hearing  for  their  claim.  And  great  as  was  the  importance 
of  a  matter  involving  the  very  existence  of  the  new  eccle- 
siastical economy,  it  was,  even  in  the  opinion  of  the  wisest, 
scarcely  so  exciting  as  the  mass  in  the  Queen's  chapel, 
against  which  the  ministers  preached,  and  every  careful 
burgher  shook  his  head  ;  although  the  lords  who  came 
within  the  circle  of  the  Court  were  greatly  troubled, 
knowing  not  how  to  take  her  religious  observances  from  the 
Queen,  they  who  had  just  at  the  cost  of  years  of  conflict 
gained  freedom  for  their  own.  On  one  occasion  when  a 
party  of  those  who  had  so  toiled  and  struggled  together 
during  all  the  trouble  past  were  met  in  the  house  of  one  of 
the  clerk  registers,  the  question  was  discussed  between 
them  whether  subjects  might  interfere  put  down  the  idol- 
atry of  their  prince — when  all  the  nobles  took  one  side, 
and  John  Knox,  his  colleagues,  and  a  humble  official  or 
two  were  all  that  stood  on  the  other.  As  a  manner  of  rec- 
onciling the  conflicting  opinions  Knox  was  commissioned 
to  put  the  question  to  the  Church  of  Geneva,  and  to  ask 
what  in  the  circumstances  described  the  Church  there 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  315 

would  recommend  to  be  done.  But  the  question  was 
never  put,  being  transferred  to  Lethiugton's  hands,  then 
back  again  to  those  of  Knox,  perhaps  a  mere  expedient 
to  still  an  unprofitable  discussion  rather  than  a  serious 
proposal. 

•  While  these  questions  were  being  hotly  and  angrily  dis- 
cussed on  all  sides,  the  preachers  and  their  party  growing 
more  and  more  pertinacious,  the  lords  impatient,  angry, 
chafed  and  fretted  beyond  bearing  by  the  ever-recurring 
question  in  which  they  were  no  doubt  conscious,  with  an 
additional  prick  of  irritation,  that  they  were  abandoning 
their  own  side,  Mary,  still  fearing  no  evil,  very  concilia- 
tory to  all  about  her,  and  entirely  convinced  no  doubt  of 
winning  the  day,  went  lightly  upon  her  way,  hunting, 
hawking,  riding,  making  long  journeys  about  the  king- 
dom, enjoying  a  life  which,  if  more  somber  and  poor  out- 
wardly, was  far  more  original,  unusual,  and  diverting  than 
the  luxurious  Jife  of  the  French  Court  under  the  shadow 
of  a  malign  and  powerful  mother-in-law.  It  did  not  seem 
perhaps  of  great  importance  to  her  that  the  preachers 
should  breathe  anathemas  against  every  one  who  tolerated 
the  mass  in  her  private  chapel,  or  that  the  lords  and  their 
most  brilliant  spokesman,  her  secretary,  Lethington,  should 
threaten  to  stop  the  Assemblies  of  the  Church  in  retaliation. 
The  war  of  letters,  addresses,  proclamations,  which  arose 
once  more  between  the  contending  parties  is  wonderful  in 
an  age  which  might  have  been  thought  more  given  to  the 
sword  than  the  pen.  But  it  at  last  became  evident  that 
something  must  be  done  in  one  way  or  the  other  to  stop 
the  mouth  of  the  indomitable  Knox,  with  whom  were  all 
the  central  mass  of  the  people,  not  high  enough  to  b3 
moved  by  the  influences  of  the  Court,  not  low  enough  to 
fluctuate  with  every  fickle  popular  fancy.  Finally  it  was 
decided  that  the  Queen  should  issue  a  decree  for  a  valua- 
tion of  all  ecclesiastical  possessions  in  Scotland — a  neces- 


316  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

sary  preliminary  measure,  but  turned  into  foolishness  by 
the  stipulation  that  these  possessions  should  be  divided 
into  three  parts,  two  to  remain  with  the  present  possess- 
ors, while  the  remaining  portion  should  be  divided  be- 
tween the  ministers  and  herself.  This  proposed  arrange- 
ment, with  which  naturally  every  one  was  discontented, 
called  forth  a  flight  of  furious  jests.  "  Good  morrow, 
my  lords  of  the  Twapairts,"  said  Huntly  to  the  array, 
spiritual  and  secular,  who  were  to  retain  the  lion's  share  ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  Knox  in  the  pulpit  denounced 
the  division.  "  I  see  twa  parts  partly  given  to  the  Devil, 
and  the  third  maun  be  divided  between  God  and  the 
Devil,"  he  cried.  "  Bear  witness  to  me  that  this  day  I 
say  it :  ere  it  be  long  the  Devil  shall  have  three  parts  of 
the  third  ;  and  judge  you  then  what  God's  portion  shall 
be." — ' '  The  Queen  will  not  have  enough  for  a  pair  of  shoes 
at  the  year's  end  after  the  ministers  are  sustained,"  said 
Lethington  ;  and  Knox  records  the  "  dicton  or  proverb" 
which  arose,  as  such  sayings  do,  out  of  the  crowd,  in  re- 
spect to  the  official,  the  Comptroller,  who  had  charge  of 
this  hated  partition — "  The  Laird  of  Pitarrow,"  cried  the 
popular  voice,  "  was  ane  earnest  professor  of  Christ ;  but 
the  meikle  Deil  receive  the  Controller." 

About  this  time  Knox  had  the  opportunity  he  had  long 
coveted  of  a  public  disputation  upon  the  mass  ;  but  it  was 
held  far  from  the  center  of  affairs,  at  the  little  town  of 
Maybole  in  Ayrshire,  where  Quentin  Kennedy  of  the  house 
of  Cassilis,  Abbot  of  Crossraguel  (upon  whose  death  George 
Buchanan  secured  his  appointment  as  pensioner),  an- 
nounced himself  as  ready  to  meet  all  comers  on  this  sub- 
ject. Knox  would  seem  to  have  attached  little  importance 
to  it,  as  he  does  no  more  than  mention  it  in  his  History  ; 
but  a  full  report  exists  of  the  controversy,  which  has  much 
more  the  air  of  a  personal  wrangle  than  of  a  grave  and 
solemn  discussion.  "Ye  said,"  cries  the  abbot,  "ye  did 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  317 

abhor  all  chiding  and  railing,  but  nature  passes  nurture 
with  you." — "I  will  neither  change  nature  nor  nurture 
with  you  for  all  the  profits  of  Crossraguel,"  says  the 
preacher.  These  amenities  belonged  to  the  period.  But 
the  arguments  seem  singularly  feeble  on  both  sides.  The 
plea  of  the  abbot  rested  upon  the  statement  in  the  Old 
Testament  that  Melchizedec  offered  bread  and  wine  to  God. 
On  the  other  side  a  simple  denial  of  this,  and  reassertion 
that  the  mass  is  an  idolatrous  rite,  seems  to  have  sufficed 
for  Knox.  It  is  almost  impossible  to  believe  that  they 
did  not  say  something  better  worth  remembering  on  both 
sides.  What  they  seem  to  have  done  is  to  have  completely 
wearied  out  their  auditors,  who  sat  for  three  days  to  listen 
to  the  altercation,  and  then  broke  up  in  disgust.  It  is 
curious  that  Knox,  so  unanswerable  in  personal  contro- 
versy, should  have  been  so  little  effectual  (so  far  as  we 
can  judge)  in  this.  There  is  a  discussion  in  another  part 
of  the  History  upon  baptism,  in  which  he  denounces  the 
Romish  ceremonies  attached  to  that  rite  as  unscriptural, 
precisely  as  if  the  Apostles  had  described  in  full  the 
method  to  be  employed. 

It  is  probable  that  it  was  the  progress  of  Knox  through 
the  West  on  this  occasion  which  encouraged  and  stimulated 
the  gentlemen  of  that  district,  always  the  most  strenuous 
of  Reformers,  the  descendants  of  the  Lollards,  the  fore- 
fathers of  the  Whigs,  to  take  the  law  into  their  own  hands 
in  respect  to  those  wandering  and  dispossessed  priests  who, 
encouraged  by  the  example  and  support  of  the  Queen,  be- 
gan to  appear  here  and  there  in  half-ruined  chapels  or 
parish  churches  to  set  up  a  furtive  altar  and  say  a  mass, 
at  peril  if  not  of  their  lives  at  least  of  their  liberty. 
When  Knox  returned  to  Edinburgh  the  Queen  was  at  Loch- 
leven,  not  then  a  prison  but  a  cheerful  seclusion,  with  the 
air  blowing  fresh  from  the  pleasant  loch,  and  the  plains 
of  Kinross  and  Fife  all  broad  and  peaceful  before  her,  for 


318  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

the  open-air  exercises  in  which  she  delighted.     She   sent 
for  Knox  to  this  retirement  and  threw  herself  upon  his 
aid  and  charity  to  stop  these  proceedings.     It  was  not  the 
first  time  they  had  met.     Two  previous    interviews   had 
taken  place,  in  the  first  of  which  Mary  gaily  encountered 
the  stern  author  of  the   "  Blast  "  upon  that  general  sub- 
ject, and  won  from  him  a  blessing  at  the  end  of  the  brief 
duel  in  which  there  was  no   bitterness.     The  second  had 
been  on  the  occasion  when  Knox,  in  the    pulpit,  objected 
to  the  dancing  and  festivities  of  Holyrood  ;  but  still  was  of 
no  very  formidable  character.     I  cannot  doubt  that  Mary 
found  something   very  humorous  and  original  in  the  ob- 
stinate and  dauntless  prophet   whom  she  desired  to  come 
to  her  and  tell  her  privately  when  he  objected  to  her  con- 
duct, and  not  to  make  it  the  subject  of   his  sermons — a 
very  natural  and  apparently  gracious  request  :  from  which 
Knox  excused  himself,    however,   as    having  no  time  to 
come  to  her  chamber  door  and  whisper  in  her  ear.      "  I 
cannot  tell  even  what  other  men  will   judge  of  me,"  he 
said,  "  that  at  this  time  of  day  am  absent  from  my  btike, 
and  waiting  upon  the  Court/' — "  Ye  will  not  always  beat 
your  buke,"  said  the  Queen.     And  it  was  on  this  second 
interview  that  as  he  left  the  presence  with  a  composed 
countenance  some  foolish  courtier  remarked  of  Knox  that 
he  was  not  afraid,    and    elicited  the  answer,    noble  and 
dignified  if  a  little  truculent  and    exaggerated  after  an 
encounter  not  at  all  solemn,   "  Why  should  the  pleasing 
face  of  a  gentlewoman  afray  me  ?     I  have  looked  in  the 
faces  of  many  angry  men  and  yet  have  not  been  af rayed 
above  measour  " — a  most  characteristic  reply 

Mary,  however,  had  another  purpose  when  she  sent  for 
Knox  to  Lochleven,  to  help  her  in  a  strait.  "She  trav- 
ailed with  him  earnestly  two  hours  before  her  supper  that 
he  would  be  the  instrument  to  persuade  the  people  and 
principally  the  gentlemen  of  the  West  not  to  put  hands  to 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY. 


319 


s,  ; 


LOCHLEVEN. 


punish  (the  priests)  any  more  for  the  using  of  themselves 
in  their  religion  as  pleased  them."    The  Reformer  per- 


320  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

ceiving  her  intention  assured  her  that  if  she  would  herself 
punish  these  malefactors,  no  one  would  interfere  ;  but  he 
was  immovable  to  any  argument  founded  on  the  patent 
fact  that  he  and  his  party  had  lately  called  that  the  perse- 
cution of  God's  saints  which  now  they  termed  the  execu- 
tion of  the  law.  Mary  did  not  enter  into  this  controversy  ; 
she  kept  to  her  point — the  vindication  of  her  own  author- 
ity. "  Will  you,"  she  said,  "  allow  that  they  should  take 
my  sword  in  their  hand  ?  "  a  question  to  which  Knox  had 
his  answer  plain  and  very  full,  that  the  sword  was  God's, 
and  that  Jezebel's  priests  were  not  spared  by  Elijah  nor 
Agag  by  Samuel  because  the  royal  authority  was  in  their 
favor.  It  would  be  difficult  to  conceive  anything  more 
exasperating  than  such  an  immovable  front  of  dogmatism  ; 
and  it  was  a  wonder  of  self-control  that  Mary  should  only 
have  shown  herself  "somewhat  offended  "  when  she  broke 
off  this  hopeless  argument,  and  withdrew  to  supper.  The 
Reformer  thought  he  was  dismissed ;  but  before  sunrise 
next  morning  two  several  messengers  came  to  his  chamber 
to  bid  him  speak  with  the  Queen  before  he  took  his 
departure.  It  was  a  May  morning,  and  no  doubt  there 
was  soon  much  cheerful  commotion  in  the  air,  boats  pushed 
forward  to  the  landing  steps  with  all  that  tinkle  of  water 
and  din  and  jar  of  the  oars  which  is  so  pleasant  to  those 
who  love  the  lochs  and  streams — for  Mary  was  bound  upon 
a  hawking  expedition,  and  the  preacher's  second  audience 
was  to  be  upon  the  mainland.  The  Queen  must  have  been 
up  betimes  while  the  mists  still  lay  on  the  soft  Lomonds, 
and  the  pearly  gray  of  the  northern  skies  had  scarcely 
turned  to  the  glory  of  the  day  :  and  probably  the  preacher 
who  was  growing  old  was  little  disposed  to  join  the  gay 
party  whose  young  voices  and  laughter  he  could  hear  in 
his  chamber,  where  he  lay  "  before  the  sun" — setting  out 
for  the  farther  shore  with  a  day's  pleasure  before  them. 
It  would  be  interesting  to  penetrate  what  were  his  thoughts 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  321 

as  he  was  rowed  across  the  loch  at  a  more  reasonable  hour, 
when  the  sunshine  shone  on  every  ripple  of  the  water, 
and  the  green  hills  lay  basking  in  the  light.  Did  he  look 
with  jealous  eyes,  and  wonder  whether  the  gray  walls 
among  the  trees  on  St.  Serf's  isle  were  giving  shelter  to 
some  idolatrous  priest  ?  or  was  his  heart  invaded  by  the 
beauty  of  the  morning,  the  heavenly  quiet,  the  murmur  of 
soft  sound  ?  His  mind  was  heavy  we  know  with  cares 
for  the  Church,  fears  for  the  stability  of  the  Reformation 
itself,  forebodings  of  punishment  and  cursings  more  ha- 
bituaj  to  his  thoughts,  and  perhaps  more  congenial  to  the 
time,  than  prosperity  and  blessing.  It  might  be  even  that 
a  faint  apprehension  (not  fear,  for  in  his  own  person 
Knox  had  little  occasion  for  fear  even  had  he  been  of  a 
timorous  nature)  of  further  trouble  with  the  Queen  over- 
clouded his  aspect  :  and  if  he  caught  a  glimpse  of  the 
ladies  and  their  cavaliers  on  the  mainland,  the  joyous 
cavalcade  would  rouse  no  sympathetic  pleasure,  so  sure 
was  he  that  their  frolics  and  youthful  pleasure  were  lead- 
ing to  misery  and  doom — in  which,  alas  !  he  was  too  sooth 
a  prophet. 

But  when  Knox  met  the  Queen's  Majestie  "  be-west 
Kinross,"  Mary  all  bright  with  exercise  and  pleasure  had 
forgotten,  or  else  had  no  mind  to  remember,  the  offense 
of  the  previous  night.  She  began  to  talk  to  him  of  or- 
dinary matters,  of  Ruthven  who  had  (save  the  mark  !) — 
dark  Ruthven  not  many  years  removed  from  that  dread- 
ful scene  in  the  closet  at  Holyrood — offered  her  a  ring, 
and  other  such  lively  trifles.  She  then  turned  to  more 
serious  discourse,  warning  Knox  against  Alexander  Gordon, 
titular  Bishop  of  Athens,  "  who  was  most  familiar  with 
the  said  John  in  his  house  and  at  his  table,"  and  whose 
professions  of  faith  seemed  so  genuine  that  he  was  about 
to  be  made  Superintendent  of  Dumfries.  "  If  you  knew 
him  as  well  as  I  do,  you  would  never  promote  him  to  that 


322  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

office  nor  to  any  other  within  your  Kirk,"  she  said. 
"  Thereintil  was  not  the  Queen  deceived,"  says  Kiiox, 
though  without  any  acknowledgment  of  the  service  she 
did  the  Church:  for  on  her  hint  he  caused  further  in- 
quiries to  be  made,  and  foiled  the  Bishop.  Again,  as  so 
often,  a  picture  arises  before  our  eyes  most  significant 
and  full  of  interest.  Mary  upon  her  horse,  perhaps  paus- 
ing now  and  then  to  glance  afar  into  the  wide  space, 
where  her  hawk  hung  suspended  a  dark  speck  in  the  blue, 
or  whirled  and  circled  downward  to  strike  its  prey,  while 
the  preacher  on  his  hackney  paused  reluctant,  often  essay- 
ing to  take  his  leave,  retained  always  by  a  new  subject. 
Suddenly  she  broached  another  and  more  private  matter, 
turning  aside  from  the  attendants  to  tell  Knox  of  the 
new  troubles  which  had  broken  out  in  the  house  of  Argyle 
between  the  Earl  and  his  wife,  who  was  Mary's  illegiti- 
mate sister.  The  Eeformer  had  already  settled  a  quarrel 
between  this  pair,  and  the  Queen  begged  him  to  interfere 
again,  to  write  to  Argyle  and  smooth  the  matter  over  if 
possible.  Then,  the  time  having  now  arrived  when  she 
must  dismiss  him,  the  field  waiting  for  her  and  the  sport 
suspended,  Mary  turned  again  for  a  parting  word. 

"  And  now,"  said  she,  "  as  touching  our  reasoning  yesternight 
I  promise  to  do  as  ye  required.  I  sail  cause  summon  the  offend- 
ers, and  ye  shall  know  that  I  shall  minister  justice." 

"  I  am  assured  then,"  said  he,  "  that  ye  shall  please  God  and 
enjoy  rest  and  prosperity  within  your  realm  ;  which  to  your 
Majesty  is  more  profitable  than  all  the  Pope's  power  can  be." 

We  have  heard  enough  and  to  spare  about  Mary's  tears 
and  the  severity  of  Knox — here  is  a  scene  in  which  for 
once  there  is  no  severity,  but  everything  cheerful,  radiant, 
and  full  of  hope.  Was  there  in  all  Christendom  a  more 
hopeful  princess,  more  gifted,  more  understanding,  more 
wise  ?  for  it  was  not  only  that  she  had  the  heart  to  take 
(or  seem  to  take)  in  a  very  hard  matter  the  advice  of  the 


QUEEN  MARY'S  BATH.-Page  332. 


Royal  Edinburgh. 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  323 

exasperating  Keformer,  entirely  inaccessible  to  reason  on 
that  point  at  least  as  he  was — but  to  give  it,  and  that  in 
a  matter  of  real  use  to  himself  and  his  party.  Was  it  all 
dissembling  as  Knox  believed  ?  or  was  there  any  pos- 
sibility of  public  service  and  national  advantage,  and  as 
happy  and  prosperous  a  life  as  was  possible  to  a  queen, 
before  her  when  she  turned  smiling  upon  the  strand  and 
waved  her  hand  to  him  as  he  rode  away  ?  Who  can  tell  ? 
That  little  tower  of  Lochleven,  that  dark  water  between 
its  pastoral  hills,  had  soon  so  different  a  tale  to  tell. 

Had  Mary  deserted  her  faith  as  it  would  have  been  such 
admirable  policy  to  do  ;  had  she  said,  like  the  great 
Henry,  that  Scotland  was  well  worth  a  mass  or  the  sacri- 
fice of  a  mass  ;  had  she  turned  round  and  persecuted  the 
priests  of  her  own  Church  as  she  now  was  about,  for  their 
safety  and  with  a  subterfuge  excusable  if  ever  subterfuge 
Avas,  to  pretend  to  do — would  posterity  have  thought  the 
better  of  her?  Certainly  it  would  not ;  but  Knox  would, 
and  her  path  would  have  been  a  thousand  times  more  clear. 
Only  it  has  to  be  said  at  the  end  of  all,  that  religion  had 
little  part  in  the  woes  of  Mary.  Had  there  been  no  Darn- 
ley  or  Both  well  in  her  path,  had  it  been  in  her  nature  to 
take  that  wise  resolution  of  Elizabeth's,  wise  for  every 
woman  who  has  great  duties  and  position  of  her  own,  how 
wonderfully  everything  might  have  been  changed  !  Such 
reflections,  however,  are  very  futile,  though  they  are 
strangely  fascinating. 

Knox  wrote  to  Argyle  immediately  after  with  that  plain 
speaking  in  which  he  delighted,  and  made  the  Earl  very 
angry.  It  might  well  have  been  part  of  Mary's  "craft," 
knowing  that  he  was  sure  to  do  this  to  embroil  him  with 
her  brother-in-law.  And  she  prosecuted  her  bishops  to 
save  them  from  the  Westland  lords,  and  imprisoned  them 
gently  to  keep  them  out  of  harm's  way.  Neither  of  these 
acts  was  very  successful,  and  it  would  seem  that  the  mol- 


324  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

lif ying  impression  that  had  been  made  upon  Knox  soon 
died  away ;  for  when  the  Qneen  opened  the  next  Parlia- 
ment he  speaks  of  her  splendor  and  that  of  her  train 
in  words  more  like  those  of  a  peevish  scold  than  of 
a  prophet  and  statesman.  "All  things  mislyking  the 
preachers,"  he  says  with  candor,  "  they  spoke  boldly 
against  the  tarjatting  of  their  tails,  and  against  the  rest  of 
their  vanity,  which  they  affirmed  should  provoke  God's 
vengeance  not  only  against  those  foolish  women,  but  against 
the  whole  Realm.''  God's  vengeance  was  freely  dealt  out 
on  all  hands  against  those  who  disagreed  with  the  speakers  ; 
but  the  silken  trains  that  swept  the  ground,  the  wonder- 
ful clear  starching  of  the  delicate  ruffs,  the  embroidered 
work  of  pearls  and  gems  which  the  fashion  of  the  time 
demanded,  were  but  slight  causes  to  draw  forth  the  nam- 
ing sword.  And  that  Parliament  was  very  unsatisfactory 
to  Knox  and  his  friends  ;  they  tried  to  bring  in  a  sump- 
tuary law  ;  they  endeavored  to  have  immorality  recog- 
nized as  crime,  and  subjected  to  penalties  as  such  ;  and 
above  all,  they  attempted  to  obtain  the  ratification  of 
various  matters  of  discipline  upon  which  Knox  so  pressed 
that  the  quarrel  rose  high  between  him  and  Murray,  and 
there  ensued  a  breach  and  lasting  coolness — .Murray  being 
as  unwilling  to  press  Queen  Mary  into  measures  she  dis- 
liked, as  Knox  was  determined  that  only  by  doing  so  was 
God's  vengeance  to  be  averted.  "When  the  Parliament 
was  over  the  preacher  made  his  usual  commentary  upon 
it  in  the  pulpit,  warning  the  lords  what  miseries  were 
sure  to  follow  from  their  carelessness,  and  discussing  the 
chances  of  the  Queen's  marriage  with  much  freedom  and 
boldness.  Once  more,  though  with  more  reason,  was  God's 
vengeance  invoked.  "  This,  my  lords,  will  I  say  (note 
the  day  and  bear  witness  after),  whensoever  the  Nobilities 
of  Scotland,  professing  the  Lord  Jesus,  consents  that  ane 
infidel  (and  all  Papists  are  infidels)  shall  be  head  to  your 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  325 

Soverane,  ye  do  so  far  as  in  ye  lieth  to  banish  Christ 
Jesus,  from  this  realm."  This  sermon  was  reported  to 
Mary  with  aggravations,  though  it  was  offensive  enough 
without  any  aggravations  ;  and  once  more  he  was  sum- 
moned to  the  presence.  The  Queen  was  "in  a  vehement 
furie,"  deeply  offended,  and  in  her  nervous  exasperation 
unable  to  refrain  from  tears,  a  penalty  of  weakness  which 
is  one  of  the  most  painful  disabilities  of  women.  "  What 
have  ye  to  do  with  iny  marriage  ?  "  she  cried  again  and 
again,  with  that  outburst  which  Knox  describes  somewhat 
brutally  as  "  owling."  His  own  bearing  was  manly  though 
dogged.  Naturally  he  did  not  withdraw  an  inch,  but  re- 
peated to  her  the  scope  of  his  sermon  with  amplifications, 
while  the  gentler  Erskine  of  Dun  who  accompanied  him 
endeavored  to  soothe  the  paroxysm  of  exasperated  impa- 
tience and  pain  which  Mary  could  not  subdue,  and  for 
which  no  doubt  she  scorned  herself. 

"  The  said  John  stood  still  without  any  alteration  of  counte- 
nance, while  that  the  Queen  gave  place  to  her  inordinate  passion  ; 
and  in  the  end  he  said,  'Madam,  in  God's  presence  I  speak,  I 
never  delighted  in  the  weeping  of  any  of  God's  creatures  ;  yea, 
I  can  scarcely  well  abide  the  tears  of  my  own  boys  whom  my 
own  hand  corrects,  much  less  can  I  rejoice  in  your  Majestie's 
weeping.  But  seeing  that  I  have  offered  you  no  just  occasion 
to  be  offended,  but  have  spoken  the  truth  as  my  vocation  craATes 
of  me,  I  must  sustain,  albeit  unwillingly,  your  Majesty's  tears 
rather  than  I  dare  hurt  my  conscience  or  betray  my  Common- 
wealth through  my  silence.' " 

He  was  ordered  to  withdraw  after  this,  and  retired 
proud  and  silent  to  the  ante-room  where  he  had  imme- 
diate proof  what  it  was  to  lose  the  royal  favor.  Hitherto 
he  had  been,  it  is  clear,  a  not  unwelcome  visitor  :  to 
Mary  an  original,  something  new  in  prickly  opposition 
and  eloquence,  holding  head  against  all  her  seductions, 
yet  haply,  at  Lochleven  at  least,  not  altogether  unmoved 


326  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

by  them,  and  always  interesting  to  her  quick  wit  and  in- 
telligence ;  and  Maister  John  had  many  friends  among  the 
courtiers.  But  now  while  he  waited  the  Queen's  pleasure, 
not  knowing  perhaps  if  she  might  not  send  him  to  the  Cas- 
tle or  the  Tolbooth  in  her  wrath,  all  his  fine  acquaintances 
forsook  him.  He  stood,  "  the  said  John,"  for  an  hour 
in  that  bustling  ante-room,  "  as  one  whom  men  had  never 
seen,"  only  Lord  Ochiltree  who  had  come  to  Holyrood 
with  him,  and  whose  daughter  he  was  about  to  marry, 
giving  any  sign  of  acquaintance  to  the  disgraced  preacher. 
And  Knox  was  human  ;  he  loved  the  cold  shade  as  little 
as  any  man,  and  the  impertinences  of  all  those  butterfly 
courtiers  moved  him  as  such  a  man  ought  not  to  have 
been  moved.  He  burst  out  suddenly  upon  the  ladies  who 
sat  and  whispered  and  tittered  among  themselves  (no 
doubt)  at  his  discomfiture.  He  would  not  have  us  think 
even  then  that  his  mind  was  disturbed  ;  he  merely  said — 

"  Oh  fayr  Ladies,  how  pleasant  were  this  life  of  yours  if  it 
should  ever  abide,  and  then  in  the  end  that  we  might  pass  to 
heaven  with  all  this  gay  gear  !  But  fie  upon  that  Knave  Death 
that  will  come  whether  we  will  or  not.  And  when  he  has  laid 
on  his  arrest  the  foul  worms  will  be  busy  with  this  flesh  be  it 
never  so  fayre  and  so  tender,  and  the  silly  soul,  I  fear,  shall  be 
so  feeble  that  it  can  neither  carry  with  it  gold  garnissing,  tar- 
jetting,  pearls,  nor  precious  stones!" 

Knox  was  never  called  to  the  royal  presence  more,  nor 
did  Mary  ever  forgive  him  the  exhibition  of  feminine 
weakness  into  which  his  severity  had  driven  her.  It  was 
intolerable,  no  doubt,  to  her  pride  to  have  been  betrayed 
into  those  tears,  to  have  seen  through  them  the  same  im- 
movable countenance  which  had  yielded  to  none  of  her 
arguments  and  cared  nothing  for  her  anger,  and  to  have 
him  finally  compare  her  to  his  own  boys  whom  his  own 
hands  corrected — the  blubbering  of  schoolboys  to  the 
tears  of  a  queen  !  There  is  perhaps  always  a  mixture 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  327 

i>f  the  tragi-comic  in  every  such  scene,  and  this  humiliat- 
ing comparison,  obtusely  intended  as  a  sort  of  blundering 
apology,  but  which  brought  the  Queen's  exasperation  and 
mortification  to  a  climax  and  Knox's  bitter  assault  upon 
the  ladies  in  their  fine  dresses  outside,  give  a  humiliating 
poignancy  to  the  exasperated  feeling  on  both  sides  such 
as  delights  a  cynic.  It  was  the  end  of  all  personal  en- 
counter between  the  Queen  and  the  preacher.  She  did 
not  forgive  him,  and  did  her  best  to  punish  :  but  in  their 
last  and  only  subsequent  meeting,  Knox  once  more  had 
the  better  of  his  royal  adversary. 

He  had  never  been  during  all  his  career  in  such  stormy 
waters  as  now  threatened  to  overwhelm  him.  Hitherto 
his  bold  proceedings  had  been  justified  by  the  support  of 
the  first  men  in  the  kingdom.  The  Lords  of  the  Congre- 
gation, as  well  as  that  Congregation  itself,  the  statesmen 
and  "natural  counselors,"  as  they  call  themselves,  of 
Scotland,  had  been  at  his  back  :  but  now  one  by  one  they 
had  fallen  away.  The  Lord  James,  now  called  Murray, 
the  greatest  of  all  both  in  influence  and  character,  had 
been  the  last  to  leave  his  side.  The  preachers,  the  great 
assembly  that  filled  St.  Giles's  almost  daily,  the  irrecon- 
cilables  with  whom  it  was  a  crime  to  temporize,  and  who 
would  have  all  things  settled  their  own  way,  formed,  it  is 
true,  a  large  though  much  agitated  backing  ;  but  the 
solid  force  of  men  who  knew  the  world  better  than  those 
absolute  spirits,  had  for  the  moment  abandoned  the  im- 
practicable prophet,  and  the  party  of  the  Queen  was 
eagerly  on  the  watch  to  find  some  opportunity  of  crush- 
ing him  if  possible.  It  was  not  long  before  this  occurred. 
While  Mary  was  absent  on  one  of  those  journeys  through 
the  kingdom  which  had  been  the  constant  habit  of  Scot- 
tish monarchs,  the  usual  mass  was  celebrated  in  the 
Chapel  of  Holyrood,  the  priests  who  officiated  there  evi- 
dently feeling  themselves  authorized  to  continue  their 


328 


ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 


WEST   DOOHWAY,  HOLYROOD   CHAPEL. 


usual  service  even  in  the  Queen's  absence,  for  whose  sake 
alone  it  was  tolerated.     But  they  were  interrupted  by  "  a 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  329 

zealous  brother,"  and  some  little  tumult  rose,  just  of  im- 
portance enough  to  justify  the  seizure  of  two  offenders, 
who  were  bound  under  sureties  to  "  underlie  the  law  "  at 
a  given  date,  within  three  weeks  of  the  offense.  In  the 
excited  state  of  feeling  which  existed  in  the  town  this 
arrest  was  magnified  into  something  serious,  and  "the 
brethren,"  consulting  over  the  matter  with  perhaps  in- 
voluntary exaggeration,  as  if  the  two  rioters  were  in 
danger  of  their  lives,  concluded  that  Knox  should  write  a 
circular  letter  to  the  Congregation  at  a  distance,  as  had 
been  done  with  such  effect  in  the  early  days  under  the 
Queen  Regent,  bidding  them  assemble  in  Edinburgh  upon 
the  day  fixed  for  the  trial.  A  copy  of  this  letter  was  car- 
ried to  the  Court  then  at  Stirling  and  afforded  the  very 
occasion  required.  Murray  returned  in  haste  from  the 
north,  and  all  the  nobility  were  called  to  Edinburgh  to  in- 
quire into  this  bold  semi-royal  summons  issued  to  the 
Queen's  lieges  without  her  authority  and  in  resistance  to 
her  will.  "The  Queen  was  not  a  little  rejoiced,"  says 
Knox,  "for  she  thought  once  to  be  revenged  of  that  her 
great  enemy."  And  it  was  evident  that  Mary  did  look 
forward  to  the  satisfaction  of  crushing  this  arrogant  priest 
and  achieving  a  final  triumph  over  the  man  whom  she 
could  neither  awe  nor  charm  out  of  his  own  determined  way. 
The  commotion  produced  by  these  proceedings  was  un- 
exampled. One  after  another  of  the  men  who  had  by 
Knox's  side  led  the  entire  movement  of  the  Reformation 
and  to  whom  he  had  been  spokesman,  secretary,  and  coun- 
selor, came  with  grave  looks  and  anxious  urgency  to 
do  what  they  could  to  procure  his  submission.  The  Master 
of  Maxwell,  hitherto  his  great  friend,  but  who  now  broke 
off  from  him  entirely,  was  the  first  to  appear.  Then  Speirs 
of  Condie  (whom  he  convinced),  then  Murray  and  Leth- 
ington  with  whom  he  held  one  of  those  long  arguments 
which  were  of  frequent  recurrence,  and  which  are  always. 


330  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

highly  dramatic — the  dour  preacher  holding  his  own  like 
a  stone  wall  before  all  the  assaults,  light,  brillianc,  ar.d 
varied,  of  the  accomplished  secretary,  whose  smile  of  con- 
tempt at  the  unconquerable  personage  before  him  and  his 
"devout  imaginations"  is  often  mingled  with  that  same 
exasperation  which  drove  Mary  to  the  womanish  refuge  of 
tears.  But  no  one  could  move  him.  And  at  last  the  day, 
or  rather  night,  of  the  trial  came. 

It  was  in  December,  the  darkest  moment  of  the  year, 
between  six  and  seven  in  the  evening,  when  the  Lords  as- 
sembled at  Holyrood,  and  the  formidable  culprit  was  in- 
troduced to  their  presence.  The  rumor  had  spread  in  the 
town  that  Knox  was  to  be  put  on  his  trial,  and  the  wbole 
Congregation  came  with  him  down  the  Canongate,  filling 
the  court  of  Holyrood  with  a  dark  surging  mass  of  men, 
who  crowded  the  very  stairs  towards  the  room  in  which  the 
council  was  held.  The  lords  were  "talking  ane  with 
another"  in  the  preliminary  moment  before  the  council 
was  formed,  when  Knox  entered  the  room.  They  were 
then  told  to  take  their  places,  headed  on  one  side  by  "  the 
Duke  "  Chatelherault,  and  on  the  other  by  Argyle.  Mur- 
ray, Glencairn,  Ruthven,  the  Earl  Marischal,  Knox's  tried 
companions  in  arms,  who  had  stood  with  him  through 
many  a  dark  day,  took  their  seats  with  averted  looks,  his 
judges  now,  and  judges  offended,  repulsed,  their  old  sym- 
pathies aggravating  the  breach.  Then  came  the  Queen 
"  witlmo  little  worldly  pomp,"  and  took  the  chair  between 
those  two  rows  of  troubled  counselors,  Lethington  at  one 
side,  Maxwell  at  the  other.  She  gave  an  angry  laugh  as 
she  took  her  place.  "  Wat  ye  '  whereat  I  laugh  ?  "  she  said 

1  It  would  be  curious  toknow-what  language  Mary  spoke  when 
she  is  reported  to  have  made  these  very  characteristic  utterances. 
It  is  one  of  the  points  in  the  discussion  about  the  famous  Casket 
letters  that  she  could  not  write  Scots.  Did  she  make  love  and 
make  war,  and  hold  courts  and  councils  of  this  grave  description, 
in  French  or  iu.  a  broken  version  of  her  native  tongue  ?  No  one 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  331 

(or  is  reported  to  have  said)  to  one  of  these  intimate  sup- 
porters. "  Yon  man  gart  me  greit,  and  grab  never  tear 
himself  :  I  will  see  if  I  can  gar  him  greit." 

The  proceedings  being  opened,  Knox's  letter  was  read. 
It  was  not  a  conciliatory  letter,  being  in  reality  a  call  if  not 
to  arms  yet  to  that  intervention  of  an  army  of  resolute  men 
which  had  overawed  the  authorities  again  and  again  in 
earlier  times.  It  contained  the  usual  vehement  statements 
about  that  crime  of  saying  mass  which,  or  even  to  permit 
it,  was  the  most  desperate  of  public  offenses  in  Knox's 
eyes  :  and  there  is  little  doubt  that  it  exaggerated  the 
danger  of  the  crisis,  and  contained  at  least  one  misleading 
statement  as  to  matters  of  which  there  was  no  proof. 
When  it  was  read  a  moment  of  silence  ensued,  and  then 
Lethington  spoke  :  — 

"  Maister  Knox,  are  ye  not  sorry  from  your  heart,  and  do  ye 
not  repent  that  sic  ane  letter  has  passed  your  pen,  and  from  you 
is  come  to  the  knowledge  of  others  ?  " 

John  Knox  answered,  "  My  Lord  Secretaire,  before  I  repent  I 
must  be  taught  my  offence." 

"  Offence  !  "  said  Lethington  ;  "  if  there  were  no  more  but  the 
convocation  of  the  Queen's  lieges  the  offence  cannot  be  denied." 

"  Remember  yourself,  my  lord,"  said  the  other,  "  there  is  a 
difference  between  ane  lawful  convocation  and  ane  unlawful.  If  I 
have  been  guilty  in  this,  I  have  often  offended  since  I  came  last 
in  Scotland  ;  for  what  convocation  of  the  brethren  has  ever 
been  to  this  day  with  which  my  pen  served  not  ?  Before  this  no 
man  laid  it  to  my  charge  as  a  crime." 

"  Then  was  then."  said  Lethington,  "  and  now  is  now.  We  have 
no  need  of  such  convocations  as  sometime  we  have  had." 

John  Knox  answered,  "  The  time  that  has  been  is  even  now 
before  my  eyes  ;  for  I  see  the  poor  flock  in  no  less  danger  now 
than  it  has  been  at  any  time  before,  except  that  the  Devil  has 
gotten  a  vissoure  upon  his  face.  Before  he  came  in  with  his  own 
face  discovered  by  open  tyranny,  seeking  the  destruction  of  all 

ever  says  so,  and  it  is  surely  a  thing  that  could  not  be  passed 
without  remark. 


332  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

that  has  refused  idolatrie  ;  and  then  I  think  ye  will  confess  the 
brethren  lawfully  assembled  themselves  for  defence  of  their 
lives.  And  now  the  Devil  comes  under  the  cloke  of  justice  to  do 
that  which  God  would  not  suffer  him  to  do  by  strength." 

"  What  is  this?"  said  the  Queen.  "  Methinks  ye  trifle  with 
him.  Who  gave  him  authentic  to  make  convocation  of  my 
lieges  ?  Is  not  that  treason  ?  " 

"  Na,  Madam,"  said  the  Lord  Ruthven,  "  for  he  makes  convo- 
cation of  the  people  to  hear  prayer  and  sermon  almost  daily,  and 
whatever  your  Grace  or  others  will  think  thereof,  we  think  it  no 
treason." 

"  Hold  your  peace,"  said  the  Queen,  "  and  let  him  answer  for 
himself." 

"I  began,  Madam,"  said  John  Knox,  "to  reason  with  the 
Secretare,  whom  I  take  to  be  ane  far  better  dialectician  than 
your  Grace  is,  that  all  convocations  are  not  unlawful  ;  and  now 
my  Lord  Ruthven  has  given  the  instance,  which  if  your  Grace 
will  deny,  I  shall  address  me  for  the  proof." 

"  I  will  say  nothing,"  said  the  Queen,  "  against  your  religion, 
nor  against  your  convening  to  your  sermons.  But  what  authority 
have  ye  to  convocate  my  subjects  when  you  will,  without  my 
commandment  ?  " 

"  I  have  no  pleasure,"  said  John  Knox,  "  to  decline  from  the 
former  purpose.  And  yet,  Madam,  to  satisfy  your  Grace's  two 
questions  I  answer,  that  at  my  will  I  never  convened  four  per- 
sons in  Scotland ;  but  at  the  order  that  the  brethren  has  ap- 
pointed I  have  given  divers  advertisements  and  great  multitudes 
have  assembled  thereupon.  And  if  your  Grace  complain  that 
this  was  done  without  your  Grace's  commandment,  I  answer,  so 
has  all  that  God  has  blessed  within  this  Realm,  from  the  begin- 
ning of  this  action.  And  therefore,  Madam  I  must  be  convicted 
by  ane  just  law,  that  I  have  done  against  the  duties  of  God's 
messenger  in  writing  this  letter,  before  that  either  I  be  sorry  or 
yet  repent  for  the  doing  of  it,  as  my  Lord  Secretare  would  per- 
suade me ;  for  what  I  have  done  I  have  done  at  the  command- 
ment of  the  general  Kirk  of  this  realm  ;  and  therefore  I  think 
I  have  done  no  wrong." 

This  detailed  report  is  in  the  form,  of  an  addendum  to 
Knox's  original  manuscript,  written  hurriedly  as  if  from 
dictation,  as  though  in  the  leisure  of  his  later  days  the 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  333 

Reformer  had  thought  it  well  to  enrich  the  story  with  so 
lifelike  and  well-remembered  a  scene.  Nothing  could  be 
more  animated  than  the  introduction  of  the  different 
personages  of  this  grave  tribunal.  The  long  argument 
with  Lethington  which  might  have  been  carried  on  indef- 
initely till  now,  the  hasty  interruption  of  the  Queen,  not 
dispose'-1  to  be  troubled  with  metaphysics,  to  bring  it  back 
to  the  practical  question,  the  quibble  of  Ruthven  of  which 
Knox  makes  use,  but  only  in  passing,  are  all  as  real  as 
though  we  had  been  present  at  the  council.  The  Queen, 
with  feminine  persistence  holding  to  her  question,  is  the 
only  one  of  the  assembly  who  has  any  heart  to  the  inquiry. 
The  heat  of  a  woman  and  a  monarch  personally  offended 
is  in  all  she  says,  as  well  as  a  keen  practical  power  of 
keeping  to  her  point.  It  is  she  who  refers  to  the  corpus 
delicti,  carrying  the  question  out  of  mere  vague  discussion 
distinctly  to  the  act  complained  of.  Knox  had  said  in 
his  letter  that  the  prosecution  of  the  men  who  had  inter- 
rupted the  service  at  Holyrood  was  the  opening  of  a  door 
"  to  execute  cruelty  upon  a  greater  multitude/'  "So," 
said  the  Queen,  "what  say  ye  to  that?"  She  received 
in  full  front  the  tremendous  charge  which  followed  : — 

"  While  many  doubit  what  the  said  John  should  answer  he 
said  to  the  Queen,  'Is it  lawful  for  me,  Madam,  to  answer  for 
myself  ?  Or  shall  I  be  dampned  before  I  be  heard  ?  ' 

'  Say  what  ye  can,'  said  she,  '  for  I  think  ye  have  enough  ado.' 

'  I  will  first  then  desire  this  of  your  Grace,  Madam,  and  of  this 
maist  honourable  audience,  whether  if  your  Grace  knows  not,  that 
the  obstinate  Papists  are  deadly  enemies  to  all  such  as  profess  the 
evangel  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  that  they  most  earnestly  desire  the 
extermination  of  them  and  of  the  true  doctrine  that  is  taught 
in  this  realm  ? ' 

The  Queen  held  her  peace ;  but  all  the  lords  with  common 
voice  said,  '  God  forbid  that  either  the  lives  of  the  faithful  or 
yet  the  staying  of  the  doctrine  stood  in  the  power  of  the  Papists  ; 
for  just  experience  tells  us  what  cruelty  lies  in  their  heart.'  " 


334  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

This  sndden  turn  of  opinion,  coming  from  her  council 
itself,  and  which  already  constituted  a  startling  verdict 
against  her,  Mary  seems  to  have  sustained  with  the 
splendid  courage  and  self-control  which  she  displayed  on 
great  occasions  :  no  tear  now,  no  outburst  of  impatience. 
She  did  not  even  attempt  to  deny  the  tremendous  indict- 
ment, but  allowed  Knox  to  resume  his  pleading.  And 
when  she  spoke  again  it  was  with  a  complete  change  of 
subject.  Apparently  her  quick  intelligence  perceived 
that  after  that  remarkable  incident  the  less  said  to  recall 
the  first  object  of  the  council  the  better.  She  went  back 
to  her  original  grievance,  accusing  Knox  though  he  spoke 
fair  before  my  lords  (which  indeed  it  was  a  strain  of  for- 
bearance to  say)  that  he  had  caused  her  "  to  weep  many 
salt  tears"  at  their  previous  meeting.  His  reply  has 
much  homely  dignity. 

"Madam,"  he  said,  "  because  now  the  second  time  your  Grace 
has  branded  me  with  that  crime  I  must  answer,  lest  for  my 
silence  I  be  holden  guilty.  If  your  Grace  be  ripely  remembered, 
the  Laird  of  Dun,  yet  living  to  testify  the  truth,  was  present  at 
that  time  whereof  your  Grace  complains.  Your  Grace  accused 
me  that  I  had  irreverently  handled  you  in  the  pulpit  ?  that  I 
denied.  Ye  said,  what  ado  had  I  with  your  marriage  ?  What 
was  I  that  I  should  mell  with  such  matters?  I  answered  as 
touching  nature  I  was  ane  worm  of  this  earth,  and  ane  sub- 
ject of  this  Commonwealth,  but  as  touching  the  office  whereintil 
it  has  pleased  God  to  place  me,  I  was  ane  watchman  both  over 
the  Realm,  and  over  the  Kirk  of  God  gather  within  the  same, 
by  reason  whereof  I  was  bound  in  conscience  to  blow  the  trumpet 
publicly  as  oft  as  ever  I  saw  any  upfall,  any  appearing  danger 
either  of  the  one  or  of  the  other.  But  so  it  was  that  ane  certain 
bruit  appeared  that  traffic  of  marriage  was  betwixt  your  Grace 
and  the  Spanish  Ally  ;  whereunto  I  said  that  if  your  nobilitie 
and  your  Estates  did  agree,  unless  that  both  you  and  your  hus- 
band shall  be  so  directly  bound  that  neither  of  you  might  hurt 
this  Commonwealth  nor  yet  the  poor  Kirk  of  God  within  the 
same,  that  in  that  case  I  would  pronounce  that  the  consenters 
were  troubler.s  of  this  Commonwealth  and  enemies  to  God  and  to 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  335 

His  promise  planted  within  the  same.  At  those  words  I  grant 
your  Grace  stormed  and  burst  forth  into  an  unreasonable  weep- 
ing. What  mitigation  the  Laird  of  Dun  would  have  made  I 
suppose  your  Grace  has  not  forgot.  But  while  that  nothing  was 
able  to  stay  your  weeping  I  was  compelled  to  say,  I  take  God  to 
witness  that  I  never  took  pleasure  to  see  any  creature  weep  (yea, 
not  my  own  children  when  my  own  hand  bett  them),  meikle  less 
can  I  rejoice  to  see  your  Grace  make  such  regret.  But  seeing  I 
have  offered  your  Grace  no  such  occasion,  I  must  rather  suffer 
your  Grace  to  take  your  own  pleasure  than  that  I  dare  to  conceal 
the  truth  and  so  betray  both  the  Kirk  of  God  and  my  Common- 
wealth. These  were  the  most  extreme  words  I  said." 

Having  thus  repeated  his  offense  (even  to  the  tears  of 
the  schoolboys)  the  Reformer's  shrift  was  ended  and  he  was 
told  that  he  might  return  to  his  house  "  for  that  night." 
No  doubt  what  he  himself  said  is  more  clearly  set  forth 
than  what  others  replied,  but  that  he  distinctly  carried 
the  honors  of  the  discussion  with  him,  and  that  his  mien 
and  bearing,  as  here  depicted,  are  manly,  grave,  and  digni- 
fied as  could  be  desired,  will  not  be  denied  by  any  reason- 
able reader.  That  they  impressed  the  council  in  the  same 
way  is  equally  evident  ;  that  council  was  composed  of  his 
ancient  companions  in  arms,  the  comrades  of  many  an 
anxious  day  and  of  many  a  triumphant  moment.  That  he 
had  offended  and  broken  with  several  of  them  would  not 
affect  the  consideration  that  to  condemn  John  Knox  was 
not  a  light  matter  ;  that  through  all  the  hours  of  that 
winter  evening  half  Edinburgh  had  been  filling  the  Court 
of  Holyrood  and  keeping  up  a  murmur  of  anxiety  at  its 
gates  ;  and  that  it  was  a  dangerous  crowd  to  whom  my 
lords  would  have  to  give  account  if  a  hair  of  his  head  was 
touched.  The  conclusion  apparently  came  with  the  force 
of  a  surprise  upon  the  Queen's  Majestic,  and  perhaps 
shook  her  certainty  of  the  sway  over  her  nobility,  which 
she  had  been  gradually  acquiring,  which  was  sufficient  to 
make  them  defend  her  personal  freedom  and  tolerate  her 


336  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

faith,  but  not  to  pronounce  a  sentence  which   they  felt  to 
be  unjust. 

"  John  Knox  being  departed,  the  Table  of  the  Lords,  and  others 
that  were  present  were  demanded  every  man  by  his  vote,  if  John 
Knox  had  not  offended  the  Queen's  Majestic.  The  Lords  voted 
uniformly  they  could  find  no  offense.  The  Queen  had  past  to 
her  cabinet,  the  flatterers  of  the  Court,  and  Lethington  princi- 
pally, raged.  The  Queen  was  brought  again  and  placed  in  her 
chair,  and  they  commanded  to  vote  over  again,  which  thing 
highly  offended  the  haill  nobilitie  so  that  they  began  to  speak 
in  open  audience — '  What !  shall  the  Laird  of  Lethington  have 
power  to  control  us  ?  or  shall  the  presence  of  ane  woman  cause 
us  to  offend  God  and  to  dampen  ane  innocent,  against  our  con- 
science for  pleasure  of  any  creature  ? '  And  so  the  haill  nobilitie 
absolved  John  Knox  again." 

The  Queen  was  naturally  enraged  at  this  decision,  and 
taunted  bitterly  the  Bishop  of  Ross,  who  joined  in  the 
acquittal,  with  following  the  multitude,  to  which  he  an- 
swered with  much  dignity,  "  Your  Grace  may  consider 
that  it  is  neither  affection  to  the  man  nor  yet  love  to  his 
profession  that  moved  me  to  absolve  him,  but  the  simple 
truth  " — a  noble  answer,  which  shows  that  the  entire  body 
of  prelates  in  Scotland  were  not  deserving  of  the  abuse 
which  Knox  everywhere  and  on  all  occasions  pours  upon 
them. 

This  was  his  last  meeting  with  Mary.  The  part  he 
played  in  public  affairs  was  as  great,  and  the  standing 
quarrel  with  the  Court,  and  all  those  who  favorecl  it,  more 
acrimonious  than  ever,  every  slanderous  tale  that  came  on 
the  idle  winds  of  gossip  being  taken  for  granted,  and  the 
most  hideous  accusations  made  in  the  pulpit  as  well  as  in 
private  places  against  the  Queen  and  her  light-hearted  com- 
pany. The  principles,  of  such  profound  importance  to 
the  nation,  which  were  undoubtedly  involved,  are  dis- 
credited by  the  fierce  denunciations  and  miserable  per- 
sonal gossip  with  which  they  were  mingled.  That  judg- 


UNDER  QUEEN  MARY.  337 

ment  should  follow  the  exhibition  of  "  tarjetted  tails/' 
i.  e.  embroidered  or  highly  decorated  trains,  and  loom 
black  over  a  Court  ball ;  and  that  Scotland  should  be 
punished  because  the  Queen  and  her  Maries  loved  danc- 
ing, were  threats  in  no  way  inconsistent  with  the  temper 
of  the  time  ;  but  they  must  have  filled  the  minds  of  reason- 
able men  with  many  revoltings  of  impatience  and  disgust. 
It  says  much  for  the  real  soundness  of  purpose  and  truth 
of  intention  among  the  exclusive  Church  party  that  they 
did  not  permanently  injure  the  great  cause  which  they 
had  at  bottom  honestly  at  heart. 


DOORWAY  HOLYROOD  PALACE 


22 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END. 

the  Assembly  of  the  Church  met  in  December 
shortly  after  these  stirring  incidents  it  was  remarked  that 
Knox  took  no  part  at  first  in  the  deliberations,  an  unexam- 
pled event.  After  the  first  burst  of  discussion,  however, 
on  the  subject  of  the  provision  for  the  Church,  he  disclosed 
the  re'ason  of  his  unusual  silence,  which  was  that  he  had  of 
late  been  accused  of  being  a  seditious  man,  and  usurping 
power  to  himself — and  that  some  had  said  of  him,  "  What 
can  the  Pope  do  more  than  send  forth  his  letters,  and 
require  them  to  be  obeyed  ?"  When  one  of  the  great 
officials  present,  no  less  a  person  than  the  Lord  Justice- 
Clerk,  took  upon  him  to  reply,  Knox  silenced  him  with  a 
few  emphatic  words — "  Of  you  I  ask  nothing,"  he  said, 
"  but  if  the  Kirk  that  is  here  present  do  not  either  absolve 
me  or  else  condemn  me,  never  shall  I,  in  public  or  in  private 
as  ane  public  minister,  open  my  mouth  in  doctrine 
or  in  reasoning."  It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  Kirk  decided 
that  it  was  his  duty  to  advertise  the  brethren  ofr  danger 
whenever  it  might  appear — but  not  without  "long  con- 
tention," probably  moved  by  the  party  of  the  Court.  At 
this  period  all  the  members  of  the  nobility  had  been  so 
universally  acknowledged  as  having  a  right  to  be  present 
at  the  Assembly  sittings,  that  messengers  were  sent  to 
advertise  them  of  their  guilt  in  absenting  themselves  when 
in  the  extremely  strained  character  of  the  relations  between 
338 


THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END.  339 

Church  and  State  they  stayed  away.  There  ensued,  some 
time  after,  a  singular  conference  between  the  leading 
ministers  and  the  lords  upon  various  matters,  chiefly  touch- 
ing the  conduct  of  John  Knox,  whose  constant  attacks  upon 
the  mass,  his  manner  of  praying  for  the  Queen,  and  the 
views  he  had  advanced  upon  obedience  to  princes,  had 
given  great  offense  not  only  at  Court  but  among  the  moder- 
ate men  who  found  Mary's  sway,  so  far,  a  gen  tie  and  just 
one.  This  conference  took  the  form  of  a  sort  of  duel  be- 
tween Knox  and  Lethington,  the  only  antagonist  who  was 
at  all  qualified  to  confront  the  Reformer.  The  comparison 
we  have  already  employed  returns  involuntarily  to  our  lips  ; 
the  assault  of  Lethington  is  like  that  of  a  brilliant  and 
chivalrous  knight  against  some  immovable  tower,  from  the 
strong  walls  of  which  he  is  perpetually  thrown  back,  while 
they  stand  invulnerable,  untouched  by  the  flashing  sword 
which  only  turns  and  loses  its  edge  against  those  stones. 
His  satire,  his  wit,  his  keen  perception  of  a  weak  point, 
are  all  lost  upon  the  immovable  preacher,  whose  determined 
conviction  that  he  himself  is  right  in  every  act  and  word 
is  as  a  triple  defense  around  him.  This  conviction  keeps 
Knox  from  perceiving  what  he  is  by  no  means  incapable 
by  nature  of  seeing,  the  grotesque  conceit,  for  instance, 
which  is  in  his  prayer  for  the  Queen.  During  the  course 
of  the  controversy  he  repeats  the  form  of  prayer  which  he 
is  in  the  habit  of  using — being  far  too  courageous  a  soul 
to  veil  any  supposed  fault.  And  this  is  the  salvamfac 
employed  by  Knox  : — 

"  Oh  Lord  !  if  Thy  pleasure  be,  purge  the  heart  of  the  Queen's 
Majesty  from  the  venom  of  idolatry,  and  deliver  her  from  the 
bondage  and  thraldom  of  Satan  in  the  which  she  has  been 
brought  up  and  yet  remains,  for  the  lack  of  true  doctrine  ;  that 
she  may  avoid  that  eternal  damnation  which  abides  all  obstinate 
and  impenitent  unto  the  end,  and  that  this  poor  realm  may  also 
escape  that  plague  and  vengeance  which  inevitably  follow 


340  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

idolatrie  maintained  against  Thy  manifest  Word  and  the  open 
light  thereof."  "  This,"  Knox  adds,  is  the  form  of  my  common 
prayer  as  yourselves  were  witness.  Now  what  is  worthy  of  re- 
prehension in  it  I  would  hear  ?  " 

"  Thei'e  are  three  things,"  said  Lethington,  "  that  never  liked 
me  ;  but  the  first  is,  '  To  pray  for  the  Queen's  Majestic  with  ane 
condition  saying,  "  Illumine  her  heart  if  Thy  good  pleasure  be.'' 
whereby  it  may  appear  that  ye  doubt  of  her  conversion.'  Where 
have  ye  the  example  of  such  prayer  ?  " 

"  Wheresoever  the  examples  are,"  said  the  other,  "  I  am  assured 
of  the  rule  which  is  this,  '  if  we  ask  anything  according  to  His 
will  He  will  hear  us '  ;  ane  our  Maister  Christ  Jesus  commanded 
us  to  pray  unto  our  Father  '  Thy  will  be  done.'  " 

After  this  discussion  has  gone  on  for  some  time,  Leth- 
ington, impatient,  returns  to  the  original  question. 

"  But  yet,"  said  Lethington,  "  why  pray  ye  not  for  her  without 
moving  any  doubt  ?  " 

"  Because,"  said  the  other,  "I  have  learnt  to  pray  in  heaven. 
Now  faith,  as  ye  know,  depends  upon  the  words  of  God,  and  so 
it  is  that  the  word  teaches  me  that  prayers  profit  the  sons  and 
dochters  of  God's  election,  of  which  number  whether  she  be  ane 
or  not  I  have  just  cause  to  doubt ;  and  therefore  I  pray  God 
illuminate  her  heart  if  His  good  pleasure  be." 

"  But  yet,"  said  Lethington,  "  ye  can  produce  the  example  of 
none  that  has  so  prayed  before  you." 

"Thereto  I  have  already  answered,"  said  John  Knox,  "  but 
yet  for  further  declaration  I  will  demand  ane  question,  which  is 
this — Whether  ye  think  that  the  Apostles  prayed  themselves  as 
they  commanded  others  to  pray  ?  " 

"Who  doubts  of  that?"  said  the  haill  company  that  were 
present. 

"  Weil  then,"  said  John  Knox,  "  I  am  assured  that  Peter  said 
these  words  to  Simon  Magus,  '  Repent  therefore  of  this  thy 
wickedness,  and  pray  to  God  that  if  it  be  possible  the  thought  of 
your  heart  maybe  forgiven  thee.'  Here  we  may  clearly  see  that 
Peter  joins  ane  condition  with  his  commandment." 

"With  such  extraordinary  arguments,  unconscious  it 
would  seem  of  the  absolute  incongruity  of  his  illustrations, 


.  THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END.  341 

obtusely  perverse  in  the  dogmatism  which  destroys  both 
Christian  charity  and  sound  perception,  though  he  was  as 
far  from,  obtuse  as  ever  man  was  by  nature — the  preacher 
stood  immovable,  nay,  unassailable.  The  perception  which 
defines  and  sets  apart  things  that  differ  was  as  much  beyond 
his  great  intellectual  abilities,  at  least  in  those  personal 
questions,  as  was  the  charity  which  thinketh  no  evil.  The 
tongues  of  angels  could  not  have  convinced  him  that 
what  was  said  to  Simon  Magus  had  no  fitness  to  be  applied 
to  Mary  Stewart.  Such  distinctions  might  be  for  the  pro- 
fane, they  were  not  for  him,  to  whom  one  example  of 
Scripture  was  like  another,  always  applicable,  of  equal 
authority  in  every  case.  It  is  not  difficult  to  understand 
the  exasperation  of  so  modern  a  mind  as  that  of  Lething- 
ton,  while  he  attempted  in  vain  to  bring  this  astounding 
debate  to  a  conclusion.  For  Knox  always,  so  to  speak, 
proves  his  case.  Granting  the  twist  in  all  his  logic,  the 
confusion  of  things  between  which  there  was  no  just  com- 
parison— and  this  twist  and  confusion  belonged  to  his  period 
as  well  as  to  himself — his  grotesque  argument  has  an  ap- 
pearance of  reality  which  carried  away  those  who  agreed 
with  him,  and  confounded  in  their  inability  to  come  to  any 
ground  of  comprehension  those  who  did  not. 

The  debate  was  long  and  minute,  and  Knox  was  no 
more  shaken  from  his  determination  that  the  mass  was 
idolatry  and  that  every  idolater  should  die  the  death,  than 
from  his  conviction  that  he  did  his  utmost  for  the  Queen 
in  praying  that  God  might  convert  her,  if  it  were  possible. 
The  argument  as  to  resisting  princes  is  still  longer  and 
more  elaborate,  but  as  it  involves  only  large  and  general 
questions  is  argued  out  with  much  more  justice  and  per- 
ception. It  was  one  of  the  subjects  most  continually 
under  discussion  among  all  who  held  the  Reformed  faith, 
and  Lethington  himself  and  all  his  audience  had  both  in 
profession  and  practise  held  the  popular  view  in  the  time 


342  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

of  Mary  of  Guise.  It  is  like  enough,  indeed,  that  some- 
where among  the  crowd  of  faces  turned  towards  the  dispu- 
tants there  was  that  long  head  and  saturnine  countenance, 
still  one  of  the  best-known  effigies  of  his  time,  of  the  scholar 
who  was  at  that  period  proud  to  be  Queen  Mary's  tutor, 
reading  Livy  with  her  in  the  afternoons,  and  who  upon 
this  question  had  views  as  clear  as  a  crystal,  waiting  for 
the  moment  when  they  could  be  set  forth.  But  George 
Buchanan,  though  he  held  office  in  the  Assembly,  had  no 
warrant  to  claim  a  hearing  between  such  men  as  the 
learned  and  lively  Lord  Secretary  and  the  great  prophet 
and  preacher  John  Knox. 

The  discussion  ended  in  nothing,  as  may  be  supposed, 
except  a  deepened  offense  on  the  part  of  the  Court  with 
the  impracticable  Eeformer,  and  an  additional  bitterness 
of  criticisn  on  the  part  of  the  Congregation  touching  all 
that  went  on  at  the  abbey — the  gaieties,  and  the  beauti- 
ful dresses,  as  well  as  the  mass,  and  now  and  then  a  whis- 
per of  scandal,  unproved  but  taken  for  granted  with  that 
miserable  eagerness  which  such  opposition  brings.  Edin- 
burgh, between  these  two  conflicting  powers,  was  no  doubt 
able,  with  the  wonderful  impartiality  of  common  life,  to 
carry  on  its  usual  existence  much  less  affected  than  we 
could  imagine  possible  by  any  of  the  disorders,  which 
almost  reached  the  height  of  civil  war  when  Murray  and 
the  other  lords  were  banished,  and  the  tide  of  Mary's  fate 
began  to  rise  darkly  between  the  unhappy  fool  she  had 
chosen  for  her  husband,  and  all  the  wild  conflicting 
elements  which  had  been  enough  to  tax  her  strength 
without  that  aggravation.  Even  Knox  acknowledges 
that  "  the  threatenings  of  the  preachers  were  fearful," 
though  he  himself  had  been  the  first  to  warn  the  people  of 
national  judgments  to  be  looked  for  because  of  the  of- 
fenses in  costume  and  other  matters  of  their  Queen.  "We 
lose,  however,  here  the  picturesque  and  dramatic  scenes 


THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END.  343 

which  added  so  much  interest  to  the  history  daring  the 
brief  period  when  she  and  he  were  friends.  The  debate 
with  Lethington,  indeed,  is  the  conclusion  of  the  brilliant 
and  vivid  piece  of  history  in  which  we  have  been  made  to 
see  all  that  was  going  on  in  the  center  of  Scottish  life — 
the  continual  tumults,  the  great  gatherings  in  the  Church, 
the  sermons,  daily  orations  full  of  burning  eloquence 
and  earnestness  in  which  every  occurrence  of  the  moment 
was  discussed,  as  .well  as  the  sacred  subjects  which  were 
familiar  in  the  mouths  of  all.  That  vigorous  and  trench- 
ant pen  falls  from  the  hand  of  the  preacher.  The  fifth 
book  of  his  History  is  prepared  it  is  said  from  his  notes 
and  under  his  eyes,  but  it  is  no  longer  the  same  as  when 
the  very  diction  was  his  own,  and  his  vivid  memory,  to 
which  all  these  incidents  were  present  as  when  he  acted  in 
them,  was  the  storehouse  upon  which  he  drew.  He  him- 
self appears  but  on  one  occasion  after  the  marriage  of 
Mary.  Darnley,  with  perhaps  an  effort  to  hold  the  bal- 
ance even  and  propitiate  the  Church,  attended  the  service 
at  St.  Giles's,  or,  as  the  writer  now  calls  it,  the  High 
Kirk  of  Edinburgh,  where  Knox  was  preaching  in  his  or- 
dinary course  unprepared  for  such  an  honor.  In  the  course 
of  his  sermon  it  chanced  that  he  characterized  as  one  of  the 
punishments  with  which  God  follows  national  sins,  that 
boys  and  women  should  rule  over  the  nations.  The 
young  King  (as  he  was  called)  was  passionately  offended, 
and  Knox  was  called  next  day  to  the  council  to  answer 
for  himself,  and  at  the  same  time  forbidden  to  preach 
for  a  stipulated  time.  He  replied  that  he  had  spoken 
only  according  to  his  text,  and  that  if  the  Church  com- 
manded him  to  abstain  from  preaching  he  would  obey. 
This  is  all  the  formal  record  ;  but  the  following  marginal 
note  is  added  which  gives  a  faint  but  not  altogether  inef- 
fective glimpse  of  the  Knox  we  know  : — 

"  In  answering  he  said  more  than  he  preached,  for  he  added, 


344  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

that  as  the  King  had,  to  pleasure  the  Queen,  gone  to  mass  and 
dishonoured  the  Lord  God,  so  should  God  in  His  justice  make 
her  an  instrument  of  his  ruin  ;  and  so  it  fell  out  in  a  very  short 
time  ;  but  the  Queen  being  incensed  with  these  words  fell  out  in 
tears,  and  to  please  her  John  Knox  must  abstain  from  preaching 
for  a  time." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  this  penalty  meant  nothing.  Knox 
was  enjoined  to  silence  as  long  only  as  the  Queen  and 
Darnley  were  in  Edinburgh  ;  and  as  they  took  their  depar- 
ture that  week,  his  work  was  scarcely  interrupted  at  all. 

During  several  eventful  years  after  this  Knox  remained 
in  the  shade,  separated  from  his  friends,  the  enemy  of  the 
Court,  and  much  denuded  of  his  national  importance.  It 
was  at  this  period  that  he  married  for  the  second  time. 
He  was  nearly  sixty,  in  shattered  health  and  worn  with 
many  fatigues,  and  it  was  scarcely  wonderful  that  his 
enemies  should  have  said  that  nothing  but  witchcraft  could 
have  induced  a  noble  young  lady,  Lord  Ochil tree's  daughter, 
a  Stewart  not  far  from  the  blood  royal,  to  bestow  her 
youth  upon  the  old  preacher.  So  it  was,  however,  whether 
seemly  or  not.  The  lady  must  at  least  have  known  him 
well,  for  her  father  had  long  been  his  faithful  friend  ;  and 
no  doubt  domestic  comfort  and  care  were  doubly  necessary 
to  a  man  whose  labors  were  unending,  and  who  had  never 
spared  himself  during  his  whole  public  life. 

It  is  doubly  unfortunate  that  we  should  have  no  record 
from  himself  of  the  first  chapter  of  that  tragedy  which 
was  soon  to  make  Scotland  the  center  of  curiosity  and 
horror  to  Christendom,  and  which  came  into  the  already 
troubled  national  life  like  a  thunderbolt.  Nothing,  per- 
haps, will  ever  fully  clear  up  the  dark  death-scene  of 
Eizzio,  the  darker  conspiracies  and  plots  that  led  to  it. 
The  fact  that  the  return  of  the  banished  lords  was  simul- 
taneous with  his  murder,  and  that  Murray  and  the  rest  had 
bound  themselves  in  a  covenant  of  duty  and  service  to 


THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END.  345 

Darnley  for  his  good  offices  in  procuring  their  recall,  of  the 
same  date  with  the  other  and  darker  bond  which  bound 
that  wretched  boy  to  the  executioners  of  the  favorite,  will 
always  make  it  possible  for  the  partisans  of  the  Queen  to 
make  out  a  certain  case  against  the  lords.  And  that 
Knox  should  have  left  Edinburgh  suddenly  and  without  a 
word  when  that  dark  deed  was  accomplished  is  once  more 
a  painful  presumption  against  him.  But  there  seems  no 
absolute  evidence  that  either  one  or  the  other  were  in- 
volved. It  is  extremely  possible,  since  the  English  envoy 
knew  beforehand  of  some  such  dark  purpose,  that  they 
too  may  have  known.  But  it  is  also  evident  that  so  sum- 
mary a  conclusion  to  the  matter  was  not  in  the  mind  even 
of  Ruthven  when  he  first  presented  himself  like  a  ghost 
in  the  Queen's  closet.  Persistent  tradition  will  have  it 
still,  in  spite  of  demonstration  to  the  contrary,  that  Signor 
Davie  was  killed  in  Mary's  presence  at  her  feet ;  but  the 
evidence  would  seem  to  prove  that  immediate  execution 
had  not  even  been  determined  on,  and  that  but  for  the 
fury  of  the  party  among  whom  the  struggling  Italian  was 
flung,  and  who  could  not  wait  for  their  vengeance,  there 
might  have  been  some  pretense  at  legality,  some  sort  of 
impeachment  and  condemnation,  to  justify  the  deed,  in 
which  proceedings  had  they  been  taken  both  Knox  and 
Murray  would  have  concurred.  It  is  satisfactory,  however, 
to  see  that  Sir  James  Melville,  Mary's  trusted  and  faithful 
friend,  Avho  was  in  Holyrood  during  the  night  of  the 
murder,  and  who  had  previously  urged  upon  the  Queen, 
with  all  the  zeal  and  earnestness  of  a  man  who  felt  his 
mistress's  dearest  interests  to  be  at  stake,  to  recall  and 
pardon  Murray  (which  had  been  done  also  in  the  strongest 
terms  by  Sir  IS".  Throgmorton,  the  English  envoy),  had 
evidently  not  the  slightest  suspicion  of  any  complicity  on 
his  part,  and  even  recorded  the  disappointment  of  Ruthven 
and  the  rest  to  find  that  the  returned  exiles  looked  coldlv 


346  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

on  them.  Melville  does  not  even  mention  Knox,  nor  is 
there  any  further  proof  of  guilt  on  his  part  than  is  in- 
volved in  the  fact  that  he  left  Edinburgh  on  the  afternoon 
of  the  day  which  saw  the  flight,  early  in  the  morning,  of 
Euthven  and  his  band.  This  hurried  departure  must 
always  be  to  the  prejudice  of  the  Eeformer ;  for  he  had 
been  in  circumstances  more  apparently  dangerous  before 
and  had  never  flinched.  He  had  the  town  of  Edinburgh 
at  his  back  and  all  the  Congregation.  Murray,  with 
whom  his  friendship  had  been  renewed,  was  again  in 
Edinburgh,  and  for  the  moment  at  least  in  favor  with  the 
Queen,  who  had  need  of  all  the  supporters  she  conld  find. 
Why  should  Knox  have  fled  ?  He  promises  in  his  History 
to  write  one  day  a  full  account  of  the  death  of  Davie,  but 
never  did  so.  Evidence,  indeed,  either  of  one  kind  or 
other,  is  entirely  wanting  ;  but  why  did  he  fly  ? 

Whatever  was  the  reason,  Knox  at  this  period  disap- 
peared entirely  from  the  scene  where  so  long  he  had  occu- 
pied the  very  foreground  of  affairs ;  and  until  that  cruel 
and  terrible  chapter  of  history  was  completed,  he  was  not 
again  visible  in  Scotland.  We  cannot  help  feeling  that 
though  inexplicable  on  other  grounds,  this  was  well  for 
his  fame.  His  violent  tongue  and  pen,  no  doubt,  would 
have  been  in  the  heat  of  the  endless  controversy.  As  it 
is,  he  was  not  only  absent  from  the  scene,  but,  what  is 
still  more  singular,  took  no  part  whatever  in  it.  The  veil 
of  age  was  falling  over  the  prophet,  and  the  penalties  of 
a  weak  constitution  overstrained.  Perhaps  the  compara- 
tive calm  of  England,  where,  strangely  enough,  he  chose 
this  time  to  visit  his  boys  (brought  up  in  a  manner  extraor- 
dinary for  the  sons  of  such  a  father,  in  the  obscure  and 
comfortable  quiet  of  English  life,  and  evidently  quite  in- 
significant— one  of  them  dying  unknown,  a  fellow  of  his 
college,  the  other  a  country  clergyman),  had  something  to 
do  in  taming  his  fiery  spirit.  To  see  the  two  lads  with 


THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END. 


34:7 


MORAY  HOUSE,  CANONGATE. 


such  blood  in  their  veins 

in  the  tame  security  and     ^T* 

insignificance  of  an  exist-  ^S^siiP^ 

ence    so    different   from  r^...,IlL 

his  own,  looking  at  their 

famous  father  with  wonder,  perhaps   not   unmixed   with 

youthful  disapproval,  as  a  Presbyterian  and  a  firebrand, 

must   have   given   that    absolute   soul    a   curious    lesson 

And  how  strange  is  his  appearance  altogether,  first  and 


348  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

last,  in  the  midst  of  that  substantial,  respectable  county 
family  of  Bowes — carrying  off  the  two  ladies  in  his  wild 
train  :  the  mother  to  whom  he  was  spiritual  physician, 
director,  and  guide  ;  the  gentle  and  silent  daughter  who 
was  his  wife  ;  flaming  over  the  Continent  and  through  all 
the  troubles  in  Scotland  with  these  incongruous  followers 
behind  him,  then  coming  back  to  drop  the  two  tame  spar- 
rows in  the  quiet  nest  which  their  mother  had  left  for  love 
of  him  !  All  we  know  of  them  is  that  in  their  early  child- 
hood he  did  not  spare  the  rod  ;  yet  was  grieved  to  see 
them  weep.  It  would  be  strange  if  it  were  not  a  dis- 
appointment to  him,  if  perhaps  a  relief  as  well,  to  find  no 
sympathy  in  his  sons  for  his  own  career.  The  daughters 
whom  the  young  wife  of  his  old  age  brought  him  lived  to 
be  like  him  ;  which  it  is  said  is  the  only  good  fortune  in 
paternity  likely  to  so  great  a  man. 

When  Knox  emerged  out  of  the  silence  which  here  falls 
so  strangely  upon  his  life  (broken  but  by  one  energetic 
protest  and  appeal  to  the  community  against  the  re-erec- 
tion of  the  bishopric  of  St.  Andrews,  which  is  full  of  all  his 
old  force)  he  was  a  weakened  and  ailing  man,  not  less 
ready  in  spirit  to  perform  all  his  ancient  offices  as  standard- 
bearer  and  champion,  but  sadly  unable  in  body  to  bear 
the  fatigues  and  excitement  of  such  an  agitated  life.  He 
reappeared  in  public  for  the  first  time  when  the  infant 
James  was  crowned  in  Stirling,  preaching  the  sermon 
which  preceded  that  melancholy  ceremony.  He  then  re- 
turned to  Edinburgh,  where  for  a  brief  period  he  saw  the 
accomplishment  of  all  his  desires  under  the  Regent  Murray's 
government :  the  mass  banished  ;  the  Kirk  reestablished  ; 
a  provision,  though  still  limited  to  a  third  of  the  old  ec- 
clesiastical property,  securely  settled  for  the  maintenance 
of  religion,  and  every  precaution  taken  for  the  stability  of 
the  settlement.  He  was  no  longer  able  to  take  the  part 
he  had  done  in  the  affairs  of  the  time  and  the  guidance  of 


THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END.  349 

the  Assemblies,  but  he  was  still  able  to  conduct,  at  least, 
the  Sunday  services  at  St.  Giles's,  and  to  give  his  strenuous 
advice  and  help  in  all  the  difficulties  of  government.  It 
must  have  seemed  to  him  that  the  light  which  comes  at 
eventide  had  been  fully  granted  to  his  prayers.  But  the 
death  of  Murray  changed  all  this  like  the  end  of  a  happy 
dream.  His  sermon  in  St.  Giles's,  after  that  terrible  event, 
is  a  wail  of  impassioned  lamentation.  "  He  is  at  rest,  0 
Lord  !  but  we  are  left  in  extreme  misery,"  he  cries,  his 
grief  redoubled  by  the  thought  that  it  was  he  who  had 
procured  from  Murray  the  pardon  of  the  assassin.  St. 
Giles's  was  full  of  the  sound  of  weeping  when  the  old  man, 
worn  with  labor  and  trouble,  pronounced  those  beautiful 
words  which  have  breathed  like  the  tone  of  the  silver  trum- 
pets over  so  many  a  grave  :  "Blessed  are  the  dead  that 
die  in  the  Lord."  It  was  one  of  the  last  of  his  appearances 
in  that  great  cathedral  which  he  had  made  his  own,  and 
to  which  he  had  given  the  only  compensation  and  adorn- 
ment which  could  make  up  for  its  old  sanctities  and  dec- 
oration sacrificed — the  prodigious  crowd  of  eager  and 
sympathetic  listeners,  the  great  voice  not  without  discords 
and  broken  notes,  but  full  of  natural  eloquence  and  high 
religious  feeling,  of  an  orator  and  prophet. 

A  few  months  after  Knox  was  prostrated  by  a  fit  of 
apoplexy,  it  is  said  ;  but  it  would  rather  seem  of  paraly- 
sis, since  bis  speech  was  affected.  He  recovered  and  par- 
tially resumed  preaching,  but  never  was  the  same  again  ; 
and  the  renewed  troubles  into  which  Scotland  and  Edin- 
burgh were  plunged  found  the  old  leader  of  the  Church 
unequal  to  the  task  of  making  head  against  them.  The 
curious  complication  of  affairs  which  had  already  existed 
on  several  occasions  in  the  capital  when  the  castle  and 
its  garrison  were  hostile  to  the  city  at  their  feet,  ready 
to  discharge  a  gun  into  the  midst  of  the  crowded  streets 
or  threaten  a  sally  from  the  gates  which  opened  directly 


350  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

upon  the  very  center  of  the  town,  was  now  accentuated 
to  the  highest  degree  by  the  adoption  of  the  Queen's 
cause  by  its  Captain,  Kirkaldy  of  Grange.  We  cannot 
pause  now  to  give  any  sketch  of  that  misplaced  hero  and 
knight  of  romance,  the  Quixote  of  Scotland,  who  took 
up  Mary's  quarrel  when  others  deserted  her,  and  for 
much  the  same  reasons,  because,  if  not  guilty,  she  was 
at  least  supposed  to  be  so,  and  at  all  events  was  tragic- 
ally unfortunate  and  in  circumstances  wellnigh  hopeless. 
These  views  brought  him  into  desperate  opposition  to 
Knox,  once  his  friend  and  leader  ;  and  though  it  is 
impossible  to  believe  that  a  man  so  chivalrous  and 
honorable  would  have  injured  the  old  Reformer,  yet  there 
were  many  partisans  of  less  repute  who  would  no  doubt 
have  willingly  struck  a  blow  at  Knox  under  shelter  of 
the  Captain's  name.  As  was  natural  to  him,  however, 
the  preacher  in  these  circumstances  redoubled  his  bold- 
ness, and  the  more  dangerous  it  was  to  denounce  Mary 
under  the  guns  of  the  fortress  held  in  her  name,  was 
the  more  anxious  with  his  enfeebled  voice  to  proclaim, 
over  and  over  again,  his  opinion  of  her,  and  of  the  punish- 
ment which,  had  there  been  justice  in  the  world  or  faith 
in  Zion,  she  must  have  undergone.  Knox's  failing  life 
was  assailed  at  this  agitated  period  by  a  kind  of  persecu- 
tion much  more  trying  to  him  than  anything  he  had  under- 
gone in  the  past.  lie  was  assailed  by  anonymous  libels, 
placards  affixed  to  the  church  doors,  and  thrown  into  the 
Assembly,  charging  him  over  again  with  railing  against 
the  Queen,  refusing  to  pray  for  her,  seeking  the  support 
of  England  against  his  native  country,  and  so  forth. 
These  accusations  had  no  doubt  a  foundation  of  truth. 
But  whatever  one  may  think  of  the  matter  as  a  question 
of  fact,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  very  air  must  have 
rung  with  the  old  man's  words  when  he  got  up  under 
those  lofty  vaults  of  St.  Giles's,  and,  with  his  gray  hair 


THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END.  351 

streaming  and  his  deep  eyes,  deeper  sunk  with  age  and 
care  than  nature,  blazing  from  under  their  shaggy  eye- 
brows, gave  "  the  lie  in  his  throat  to  him  that  either  dare 
or  will  say  that  ever  I  sought  support  against  my  native 
country/'  "  What  I  have  been  to  my  country,"  he  went 
on,  with  a  courage  and  dignity  that  calls  forth  all  our 
sympathies,  "albeit  this  unthankful  age  will  not  know, 
yet  the  ages  to  come  will  be  compelled  to  bear  witness  to 
the  truth.  And  thus  I  cease,  requiring  of  all  men  that 
have  to  oppose  anything  against  me  that  he  will  do  it  so 
plainly  as  I  make  myself  and  all  my  doings  manifest  to 
the  world  ;  for  to  me  it  seems  a  thing  most  unreasonable 
that  in  my  decrepit  age  I  should  be  compelled  to  fight 
against  shadows  and  howlets  that  dare  not  abide  the 
light/' 

These  flying  accusations  against  him,  to  which,  however, 
he  was  well  accustomed,  were  followed,  it  is  said,  by  more 
startling  warnings,  such  as  that  of  a  musket  ball  which  came 
through  his  window  one  evening,  and  had  he  been  seated 
in  his  usual  place  would  have  killed  him  ;  a  thing  which 
might  have  been  accidental,  though  no  one  believed  so. 
He  was  persuaded  at  last  to  leave  Edinburgh  only  by  the 
representations  of  the  citizens  that  were  he  attacked 
they  were  resolved  to  defend  him,  and  their  blood  would 
consequently  be  on  his  head.  On  this  argument  he  moved 
to  St.  Andrews,  the  scene  of  his  first  ministry,  and  always 
a  place  beloved  ;  leaving  Edinburgh  at  the  darkest  moment 
of  her  history,  the  Church  silenced  with  him,  and  all  the 
order  and  peace  of  ordinary  life  suspended.  At  this  crisis 
of  the  struggle,  when  Kirkaldy's  garrison  was  reinforced, 
by  all  the  party  of  the  Hamiltons,  and  the  city  lay,  over- 
awed and  helpless,  at  the  mercy  of  the  fortress,  the  life 
of  the  Edinburgh  citizens  underwent  an  extraordinary 
change.  The  churches  were  closed,  and  all  the  pious 
habits  of  the  time  suspended  :  "  neither  was  there  any 


352  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

sound  of  bell  heard  in  the  town,  except  the  ringing  of  the 
cannon. "  How  strange  this  was  among  a  population 
which  had  crowded  daily  to  the  sermon  and  found  the  chief 
excitement  of  its  life  in  the  orations  of  the  preacher,  it  is 
scarcely  necessary  to  point  out. 

The  picture  of  Knox  in  St.  Andrews,  where  he  went  in 
May  1571,  after  all  these  agitations,  is  wonderfully  sooth- 
ing and  subdued.  He  was  far  from  being  without  agita- 
tion even  there.  The  new  institution  of  "  Tulchan " 
bishops — called  so  by  the  popular  wit,  men  who  bore  the 
title  alone  of  their  supposed  bishopric,  transferring  the 
revenue  to  the  lay  patron,  and  who  officiated,  it  would 
appear,  much  as  pleased  them,  according  to  the  old  rule, 
or  to  the  form  of  the  Reformed  service — had  just  been 
invented  ;  and  Knox  was  called  upon  to  instal  the  nominal 
bishop  of  St.  Andrews,  a  thing  which  he  refused  to  do. 
He  was  in  consequence  accused  by  some  foolish  person  of 
himself  desiring  to  have  the  bishopric  (such  as  it  was),  an 
accusation  of  which  it  is  extraordinary  that  he  conde- 
scended to  take  any  notice.  But  apart  from  these  rags  and 
remnants  of  familiar  conflict,  his  life  in  the  little  city  by 
the  sea  has  a  pleasant  repose  and  calm.  "  He  ever  spoke 
but  sparingly  against  the  mock  bishop,  because  he  loved 
the  man."  This  softer  note  is  carried  out  in  the  two 
glimpses  of  him  which  appear  to  us  chiefly  through  the 
recollections  of  the  gentle  James  Melville,  then  a  youth 
studying  at  St.  Andrews.  The  old  man  seems  to  have 
taken  pleasure  in  the  sight  of  the  boys  about,  who  were 
carrying  on  their  education  in  the  place  where  he  himself 
had  taught  those  "  bairns,"  whom  Wishart  had  sent  him 
back  to  in  his  fervid  manhood.  "  He  would  sometimes 
come  in  and  repose  him  in  our  college  yard,  and  call  us 
scholars  to  him,  and  bless  us  and  exhort  us  to  know  God 
and  His  work  in  our  country,  and  stand  by  the  good  cause 
—to  use  our  time  well  and  learn  the  guid  instructions  and 


THE  PENDS,  ST.  ANDREWS. -Page  353. 


Royal  Edinburgh, 


THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END.  353 

follow  the  guid  examples  of  our  maisters.  Our  haill  college 
(St.  Leonard's)  maister  and  scholars  were  sound  and  zeal- 
ous for  the  good  cause,  the  other  two  colleges  not  so." 
Nor  did  he  disdain  the  amusements  of  the  young  men,  for 
when  one  of  the  professors  made  a  play  at  the  marriage  of 
Mr.  John  Colvin,  it  was  performed  in  Mr.  Knox's  presence. 
Alas  !  truth  compels  us  to  add  that  the  subject  of  the  play 
was  grim  and  not  so  peaceful  as  the  occasion,  for  it  repre- 
sented the  imaginary  siege  and  taking  of  the  Castle  of 
Edinburgh — then  in  full  activity,  and  carrying  fire  and 
flame  to  the  houses  of  the  Edinburgh  burghers — and  "  the 
Captain  with  ane  or  twa  with  him  hanged  in  effigies."  It 
would  seem,  however,  that  Knox  loved  the  young  scholars 
better  than  their  instructors,  for  in  one  of  his  few  letters 
written  from  St.  Andrews,  to  the  Assembly  meeting  at 
Perth,  he  charges  the  brethren  above  all  things  "  to  pre- 
serve the  Kirke  from  the  bondage  of  Universities/'  neither 
to  subject  the  pulpit  to  them,  nor  to  exempt  them  from 
its  jurisdiction. 

Knox  was  lodged  in  the  abbey  of  which  there  now  re- 
mains nothing  but  a  portion  of  the  enclosing  wall,  and  it 
was  but  an  old  man's  saunter  in  the  sunny  morning,  with 
his  staff  and  his  servant's  arm,  through  the  noble  gateway 
of  the  Pends  to  where  St.  Leonard's  stood,  looking  away 
to  the  East  Neuk  over  the  ripening  fields.  St.  Leonard's, 
however,  has  shared  the  fate  of  the  abbey  and  exists  no 
more. 

Still  more  characteristic  is  the  description  given  by  the 
same  pen  of  Knox's  public  appearances.  It  was  young 
Melville's  greatest  privilege,  the  best  of  all  the  benefits  he 
received  during  that  year,  to  hear  "  that  maist  notable 
prophet  and  apostle  of  our  nation  preach." 

"  I  had  my  pen  and  my  little  book  and  took  away  such  things 
as  I  could  comprehend.  In  the  opening  of  his  text  he  was  mod- 
erate for  the  space  of  half  an  hour,  but  when  he  entered  to  up- 


354  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

plication  he  made  me  so  to  grew  and  tremble  that  I  could  not  hold 
a  pen  to  write.  In  St.  Andrews  he  was  very  weak.  I  saw  him 
every  day  of  his  doctrine  go  hulie  and  fear  (hooley  and  fairly, 
gently  and  with  caution) ,  with  a  furring  of  martins  about  his 
neck,  a  staff  in  the  ane  hand,  and  gude  godlie  Richart  Ballenden 
holding  up  the  other  oxter,  from  the  Abbey  to  the  Parish  Kirk  ; 
and  by  the  same  Richart  and  another  servant  lifted  up  to  the 
pulpit,  where  he  behoved  to  lean  at  his  first  entry  ;  but  ere  he 
had  done  his  sermon,  he  was  sae  active  and  vigorous  that  he  was 
like  to  ding  the  pulpit  in  blads  and  flie  out  of  it." 

Melville  says  much,  as  indeed  most  of  the  narratives  of 
the  time  do,  of  Knox's  prophecies,  especially  in  respect  to 
the  Castle  of  Edinburgh,  which  he  said  would  run  like 
a  sandglass — a  prediction  supposed  to  be  fulfilled  by  a 
shower  of  sand  pouring  from  some  portion  of  the  rock  ; 
and  its  Captain,  Kirkaldy,  who  was  to  escape  over  the 
walls,  but  to  be  taken  and  to  hang  against  the  sun.  All 
of  which  things,  and  many  more,  occurred  precisely  as 
the  seer  said,  after  his  death,  striking  great  awe  to  the 
hearts  of  those  to  whom  the  predictions  were  made.  The 
special  prophecy  in  respect  to  Grange  was  softened  by  the 
announcement  that  "God  assures  me  there  is  mercy  for 
his  soul."  And  it  is  at  once  pathetic  and  impressive  to 
read  of  the  consolation  which  this  assurance  gave  to  the 
chivalrous  Kirkaldy  on  the  verge  of  the  scaffold  ;  and  the 
awe-inspiring  spectacle  presented  to  the  believers,  who 
after  his  execution  saw*  his  body  slowly  turn  and  hang 
against  the  western  sun,  as  it  poured  over  the  Church- 
yard of  St.  Giles's,  "  west,  about  off  the  northward  neuk 
of  the  steeple."  But  this  was  after  the  prophet  himself 
had  passed  into  the  unseen. 

Knox  returned  to  Edinburgh  in  1572,  in  August,  the 
horrors  of  the  struggle  between  the  Queen's  party  and 
the  King's,  as  it  was  called,  or  Eegent's,  being  for  the 
moment  quieted,  and  the  banished  citizens  returning,  al- 
though no  permanent  pacification  had  yet  taken  place. 


THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END.  355 

He  had  but  a  few  months  remaining  of  life,  and  was  very 
weary  of  the  long  struggle  and  longing  for  rest.  "  Weary 
of  the  world,  and  daily  looking  for  the  resolution  of  this 
my  earthly  tabernacle,"  he  says.  And  in  his  last  publica- 
tion dated  from  St.  Andrews,  whither  the  printer  Lek- 
previk  had  followed  him,  he  heartily  salutes  and  takes 
good-night  of  all  the  faithful,  earnestly  desiring  the  as- 
sistance of  their  prayers,  "  that  without  any  notable 
scandal  to  the  evangel  of  Jesus  Christ  I  may  end  my 
battle  :  for,"  he  adds,  "  as  the  world  is  weary  of  me,  so 
am  I  of  it."  He  lived  long  enough  to  welcome  his  suc- 
cessor in  St.  Giles's,  to  whom,  to  hasten  his  arrival  he 
wrote  the  following  touching  letter,  one  of  the  last  com- 
positions of  his  life  : 

"  All  worldlie  strength,  yea  even  in  things  spiritual  decayes, 
and  yet  shall  never  the  work  of  God  decay.  Belovit  brother, 
seeing  that  God  of  His  mercy,  far  above  my  expectation,  has 
callit  me  over  again  to  Edinburgh,  and  yet  that  I  feel  nature  so 
decayed,  and  daylie  to  decay,  that  I  look  not  for  a  long  con- 
tinuance of  my  battle,  I  would  gladly  ance  discharge  my  con- 
science into  your  bosoin,  and  into  the  bosom  of  others  in  whom 
I  think  the  fear  of  God  remains.  Gif  I  had  the  abilitie  of  bodie, 
I  suld  not  have  put  you  to  the  pain  to  the  whilk  I  now  requyre 
you,  that  is,  ance  to  visit  me  that  we  may  confer  together  on 
heavenly  things  ;  for  into  earth  there  is  no  stability  except  the 
Kirk  of  Jesus  Christ,  ever  fighting  under  the  cross ;  to  whose 
myghtie  protection  I  heartilie  commit  you.  Of  Edinburgh  the 
VII.  of  September  1572.  JHONE  Kxox. 

"  Haist  lest  ye  come  too  lait." 

He  lived  to  induct  this  successor,  and  to  hear  the  terrible 
news  of  that  massacre  in  France,  which  horrified  all 
Christendom,  but  was  of  signal  good  to  Scotland  by  pro- 
curing the  almost  instantaneous  collapse  of  the  party 
which  fought  for  the  Queen,  and  held  the  restoration  of 
Roman  Catholic  worship  to  be  still  possible.  That  hope 
died  out  with  the  first  sound  of  the  terrible  news  which 


356  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

proved  so  abundantly  Knox's  old  assertion  that  in  the 
hands  of  the  Papists  there  was  no  safety  for  his  life,  or 
the  life  of  any  who  believed  with  him.  Almost,  however, 
before  this  grain  of  good  in  the  midst  of  so  much  evil  be- 
came apparent  the  prophet  had  taken  his  departure  from 
this  world.  After  the  simple  ceremonial  at  which  he  had 
officiated,  of  his  successor's  installation,  John  Knox  re- 
turned home  in  the  light  of  the  brief  November  day,  as 
Melville  had  seen  him,  supported  by  the  arm  of  his  faith- 
ful servant.  The  crowd  which  had  filled  St.  Giles's  hurry- 
ing out  before  him  lined  the  street,  and  watched  the  old 
man  as  he  crept  along  down  the  hill  to  his  house,  with 
many  a  shaken  head  and  many  a  murmured  blessing.  In 
this  last  scene  all  were  unanimous  ;  there  was  no  one  to 
cast  a  gibe  or  an  unkindly  look  upon  that  slow  aged  pro- 
gress from  the  scene  of  his  greatest  labors  to  the  death- 
bed which  awaited  him.  When  the  spectators  saw  him 
disappear  within  his  own  door,  they  all  knew  that  it  was 
for  the  last  time.  He  lay  for  about  a  fortnight  dying, 
seeing  everybody,  leaving  a  charge  with  one,  a  prophecy 
with  another,  with  a  certain  dignified  consciousness  that 
his  death  should  not  be  merely  as  other  men's,  and  that  to 
show  the  reverential  company  of  friends  who  went  and 
came  how  to  die  was  the  one  part  of  his  mission  which  had 
yet  to  be  accomplished.  He  ended  his  career  on  the  24th 
November  1572,  having  thus  held  a  sort  of  court  of  death 
in  his  chamber  and  said  everything  he  had  to  say — dying 
a  teacher  and  prophet  to  men,  as  he  had  lived. 

No  man  has  been  more  splendidly  applauded,  and  none 
more  bitterly  dispraised.  It  is  in  one  sense  the  misfor- 
tune of  our  age  that  it  is  little  able  to  do  either.  If  stead- 
fast adherence  to  what  he  thought  the  perfect  way,  if  the 
most  earnest  purpose,  the  most  unwearying  labor,  the 
profoundest  devotion  to  his  God  and  his  country  are 
enough  to  constitute  greatness,  John  Knox  is  great.  He 


INTERIOR  OF  ST.  GILES'S.— Page  3o8. 

Royal  Edinburgh. 


THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END.  357 

was  at  the  same  time  a  man  all  faults,  bristling  with  prej- 
udices, violent  in  speech,  often  merciless  in  judgment, 
narrow,  dogmatic,  fiercely  intolerant.  He  was  incapable 
of  that  crowning  grace  of  the  imagination  and  heart 
•which  enables  a  man  to  put  himself  in  another's  place  and 
do  as  he  would  be  done  by.  But  even  this  we  must  take 
with  a  qualification ;  for  Knox  would  no  doubt  have  re- 
plied to  such  an  objection  that  had  he  been  a  miserable 
idolater,  as  he  considered  the  upholders  of  the  mass  to  be, 
he  could  not  but  have  been  grateful  to  any  man  who  had 
dragged  him  by  Avhatever  means  from  that  superstition. 
He  was  so  strong  in  the  certainty  of  being  right  that  he 
was  incapable  even  of  considering  the  possibility  that  he 
might  be  wrong.  And  there  was  in  him  none  of  those 
reluctances  to  give  pain,  none  of  those  softening  expedi- 
ents of  charity  which  veil  such  a  harsh  conviction  and 
make  men  hesitate  to  condemn.  He  knew  not  what  hesi- 
tation was,  and  scorned  a  compromise  as  if  it  had  been  a 
lie,  nor  would  he  suffer  that  others  should  do  what  was 
impossible  to  himself.  His  determination  to  have  his  own 
way  was  indeed  justified  by  the  conviction  that  it  was  the 
way  of  God,  but  his  incapability  of  waiting  or  having  pa- 
tience, or  considering  the  wishes  and  convictions  of  others, 
or  contenting  himself  with  a  gradual  advance  and  progres- 
sion, have  no  such  excuse. 

These  were,  however,  of  the  very  essence  of  his  char- 
acter. A  perfectly  dauntless  nature  fearing  nothing,  the 
self-confidence  of  an  inspired  prophet,  the  high  tyrannical 
impulse  of  a  swift  and  fiery  genius  impatient  of  lesser 
spirits,  were  all  in  him,  making  of  him  the  imperative,  ab- 
solute, arrogant  autocrat  he  was  ;  but  yet  no  higher  ambi- 
tion, no  more  noble  purpose,  ever  inspired  a  man.  He  de- 
sired for  his  countrymen  that  they  should  be  a  chosen 
people  like  those  of  old  whom  God  had  selected  to  receive 
His  revelation  j  his  ambition  was  to  make  Scotland  the 


358 


EOYAL  EDINBURGH. 


JKNOX'S  PULPIT.    In  the  Antiquarian  Society's  Museum,  Edinburgh. 

most  pure,  the  most  godlike,  of  all  countries  of  the  earth. 
In  many  things  he  was  intolerable,  in  some  he  was  wrong 
and  self-deceived.  He  was  too  eager,  too  restless,  too  in- 
tent upon  doing  everything,  forcing  the  wheels  of  the 
great  universe  and  clutching  at  his  aim  whatever  condi- 
tions of  nature  might  oppose — to  be  wholly  heroic.  Yet 
there  are  none  of  the  smoother  or  even  more  lovable  figures 
of  history  whom  it  would  be  less  possible  to  strike  from  off 
the  list  of  heroes.  The  impression  which  he  left  upon 
the  religion  and  character  of  Scotland  remains  to  this  day  ; 
and  if  we  think,  as  many  have  done  during  all  these  ages, 
that  that  development  of  national  life  is  the  highest  that 
could  be  aimed  at,  John  Knox  was  one  of  the  greatest  of 
men.  But  if  he  transmitted  many  great  qualities  to  his 
country,  he  also  transmitted  the  defects  of  these  qualities. 


THE  TRIUMPH  AND  END  359 

He  cut  Scotland  adrift  in  many  respects  from  the  com- 
munity of  Christendom.  He  cut  her  off  from  her  ances- 
tors and  from  those  hallowing  traditions  of  many  ages 
which  are  the  inheritance  of  the  universal  Church.  He 
taught  her  to  exult  in  that  disruption,  not  to  regret  it ; 
and  he  left  an  almost  ineradicable  conviction  of  self-supe- 
riority to  a  world  lying*  in  wickedness,  in  the  innermost 
heart  of  the  nation.  It  is  a  wonderful  testimony  to  a  man 
that  he  should  have  thus  been  able  to  imprint  his  o\vn 
characteristics  upon  his  race  :  and  no  doubt  it  is  because 
he  was  himself  of  the  very  quintessence  of  its  national 
character  to  start  with,  that  he  has  maintained  this  pro- 
digious power  through  these  three  hundred  years. 

He  lies,  it  is  thought,  if  not  within  the  walls  of  St. 
Giles's  under  the  flags  between  the  Cathedral  and  the 
Parliament  House,  with  all  the  busy  life  of  modern  Edin- 
burgh, the  feet  of  generations  of  men  treading  out  the 
hours  and  years  over  his  head  ;  a  more  appropriate  bed  for 
him  than  green  mound  or  marble  monument.  That  stony 
square  is  consecrated  ground  blessed  near  a  thousand  years 
ago  by  ancient  priests  who  cared  little  more  for  Rome  than 
do  their  modern  successors  now.  But  little  heeded  Knox 
for  priestly  blessing  or  consecrated  soil.  "  The  earth  is 
the  Lord's  and  the  fulness  thereof"  was  the  only  consecra- 
tion of  which  he  thought. 


CHAPTEE  IV. 

THE   SCHOLAR   OF  THE   EEFOEMATION". 

i  THE  age  of  Mary  Stewart  is  in  many  ways  the  climax  of 
Scottish  national  history,  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  in- 
teresting and  exciting  chapters  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
The  Stewarts  of  Scotland  had  been  up  to  this  point  a  native 
race  entirely  Scots  in  training  as  in  birth,  and  bent  above 
all  things  upon  the  progress  and  consolidation  of  their 
own  ancient  kingdom,  the  poor  but  proud;  a  speck  all 
but  lost  in  the  distance  of  the  seas,  yet  known  all  over 
Christendom  wherever  errant  squires  or  chivalrous  pre- 
tensions were  known.  But  the  new  sovereign  of  Scotland 
was  one  whose  heart  and  pride  were  elsewhere,  whose 
favorite  ambitions  were  directed  beyond  the  limits  of  that 
ancient  kingdom  with  which  she  had  none  of  the  associa- 
tions of  youth,  and  to  which  she  came  a  stranger  from 
another  Court  far  more  dazzling  and  splendid,  with  hopes 
and  prospects  incapable  of  being  concentrated  within  the 
boundary  of  the  Tweed.  There  is  no  indication  that  the 
much-contested  history  of  Mary  Stewart  has  lost  any  of  its 
interest  during  the  progress  of  the  intermediate  centuries  ; 
on  the  contrary,  some  of  its  questions  are  almost  more 
hotly  contested  now  than  they  were  at  the  moment  when 
they  arose.  Her  chivalrous  defenders  are  more  bold  than 
once  they  were,  and  though  the  tone  of  her  assailants  is 
subdued,  it  is  from  a  natural  softening  of  sentiment  towards 
the  past,  and  still  more  from  the  fashion  of  our  time,  which 
360 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION. 

finds  an  absorbing  interest  in  the  manifestations  of  in- 
dividual character  and  the  discussion  of  individual  motives, 
rather  than  from  any  change  of  opinion.  I  do  not  venture 
to  enter  into  that  long-continued  conflict,  or  to  attempt 
to  decide  for  the  hundredth  time  whether  a  woman  so 
gifted  and  unfortunate  was  more  or  less  guilty.  Both 
parties  have  gone,  and  still  go,  too  far  in  that  discussion  ; 
and  Mary  would  not  have  thanked  (I  imagine)  those 
partisans  who  would  prove  her  innocence  at  the  cost  of  all 
those  vigorous  and  splendid  qualities  which  made  her  re- 
markable. She  could  scarcely  be  at  once  an  unoffending 
victim  and  one  of  the  ablest  women  of  her  time. 

As  this  is  the  most  interesting  of  all  the  epochs  of  Scottish 
history — and  that  not  for  Mary's  sake  alone,  but  for  the 
wonderful  conflict  going  on  apart  from  her,  and  in  which 
her  tragic  career  is  but  an  episode — so  it  is  the  most  excit- 
ing and  picturesque  period  in  the  records  of  Edinburgh, 
which  was  then  in  its  fullest  splendor  of  architectural 
beauty  and  social  life  ;  its  noble  streets  more  crowded,  more 
gay,  more  tumultuous  and  tragical  ;  its  inhabitants  more 
characteristic  and  individual ;  the  scenes  taking  place  with- 
in it  more  dramatic  and  exciting  than  at  any  other  part  of 
its  history.  Fine  foreign  ambassadors,  grave  English  diplo- 
mats trained  in  the  school  of  the  great  Cecil,  and  bound 
to  the  subtle  and  tortuous  policy  of  the  powerful  Eliza- 
beth ;  besides  a  new  unusual  crowd  of  lighter  import  but 
not  less  difficult  governance,  the  foreign  artists,  musicians, 
courtiers  of  all  kinds,  who  hung  about  the  palace,  had  come 
in  to  add  a  hundred  complicating  interests  and  pursuits 
to  the  simpler  if  fiercer  contentions  of  feudal  lords  and 
protesting  citizens  :  not  to  speak  of  the  greatest  change  of 
all,  the  substitution  for  the  ambitious  Churchman  of  old, 
with  a  coat  of  mail  under  his  rochet,  of  the  absolute  and 
impracticable  preacher  who  gave  no  dispensations  or 
indulgences,  and  permitted  no  compromise.  All  these 


362  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

new  elements  complicated  by  the  tremendous  question  of 
the  English  succession,  and  the  introduction  of  many 
problems  of  foreign  politics  into  a  crisis  bristling  with  diffi- 
culties of  its  own,  made  the  epoch  extraordinary  ;  while 
the  very  streets  were  continually  filled  by  exciting  spec- 
tacles, by  processions,  by  suddeii  fights  and  deadly  strug- 
gles, by  pageants  and  splendors,  one  succeeding  another, 
in  which  the  whole  population  had  their  share.  The 
decree  of  the  town  council  that  "  lang  weapons,"  spears, 
lances,  and  Jedbnrgh  axes,  should  be  provided  in  every 
shop — so  that  when  the  town  bell  rang  every  man  might 
be  ready  to  throw  down  his  tools  or  his  merchandise  and 
grip  the  ready  weapon — affords  the  most  striking  sugges- 
tion of  those  sudden  tumults  which  might  rise  in  a  mo- 
ment, and  which  were  too  common  to  demand  any  special 
record,  but  kept  the  town  in  perpetual  agitation  and  excite- 
ment— an  agitation,  it  is  true,  by  no  means  peculiar  to  Ed- 
inburgh. No  painter  has  ever  done  justice  to  the  scene 
which  must  have  been  common  as  the  day,  when  the  beauti- 
ful young  Queen,  so  little  accustomed  to  the  restraints  and 
comparative  poverty  of  her  northern  kingdom,  and  able  to 
surround  herself  with  the  splendor  she  loved  out  of  her 
French  dowry,  rode  out  in  all  her  bravery  up  the  Canon- 
gate,  where  every  outside  stair  and  high  window  would  be 
crowded  with  spectators,  and  through  the  turreted  and 
battlemented  gate  to  the  grim  fortress  on  the  crown  of  the 
hill,  making  everything  splendid  with  the  glitter  of  her 
cortege  and  her  own  smiles  and  unrivaled  charm.  Sadder 
spectacles  that  same  beautiful  Queen  provided  too — miser- 
able journeys  up  and  down  from  the  unhappy  palace,  some- 
times through  a  stern  suppressed  tumult  of  hostile  faces, 
sometimes  stealthily  under  cover  of  night  which  alone  could 
protect  her.  Everything  in  Edinburgh  is  associated  more 
or  less  with  Mary's  name.  There  is  scarcely  an  old  house 
existing,  with  any  authentic  traces  of  antiquity,  in  which 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.     3^3 

she  is  not  reported  to  have  taken  refuge  in  her  trouble  or 
visited  in  her  pleasure.  The  more  vulgar  enthusiasts  of 
the  causeways  are  content  to  abolish  all  the  other  associa- 
tions of  old  Edinburgh  for  Mary's  name. 

But  I  will  not  attempt  to  revive  those  pageants  either 
of  joy  or  sorrow.  There  are  other  recollections  which  may 
be  evoked  with  less  historical  responsibility  and  at  least  a 
little  more  freshness  and  novelty.  No  figure  can  be  in- 
troduced out  of  that  age  who  has  not  some  connection 
one  way  or  other  with  the  Queen  ;  and  the  great  scholar, 
whose  reputation  has  remained  unique  in  Scotland,  had 
some  share  in  her  earlier  and  happier  life,  as  well  as  a 
link,  supposed  of  treachery,  with  her  later  career.  George 
Buchanan  was  the  Queen's  reader  and  master  in  her 
studies  when  all  was  well  with  her.  He  is  considered  by 
some  of  her  defenders  to  be  the  forger  of  the  wonderful 
letters  which,  if  true,  are  the  most  undeniable  proof  of 
her  guilt.  But  these  things  were  but  incidents  in  his 
career,  and  he  is  in  himself  one  of  the  most  illustrious  and 
memorable  figures  among  the  throngs  that  surrounded 
her  in  that  brief  period  of  sovereignty  which  has  taken 
more  hold  of  the  imagination  of  Scotland,  and  indeed 
of  the  world,  than  many  a  longer  and,  in  point  of  fact, 
more  important  reign. 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  how  it  is  that  in  later  days, 
and  when  established  peace  and  tranquillity  of  living 
might  have  been  supposed  to  give  greater  encouragement 
to  study,  accurate  and  fine  scholarship  should  have  ceased 
to  be  prized  or  cultivated  in  Scotland.  Perhaps,  however, 
the  very  advantages  upon  which  we  have  plumed  ourselves 
so  long,  the  general  diffusion  of  education  and  higher 
standard  of  knowledge,  is  one  of  the  causes  of  this  failure 
— not  only  the  poverty  of  Scotch  universities  and  want  of 
endowments,  but  the  broader  and  simpler  scale  on  which 
our  educational  systems  were  founded,  and  which  have 


364:  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

made  it  more  important  to  train  men  for  the  practical 
uses  of  teaching  than  permit  to  them  the  waywardness 
and  independence  of  a  scholar.  These  results  show  the 
"  defauts  de  nos  qualites,"  though  we  are  not  very  willing 
to  admit  the  fact.  But  in  the  earlier  centuries  no  such 
reproach  rested  upon  us.  Although  perhaps,  then  as 
now,  the  Scotch  intelligence  had  a  special  leaning  to- 
wards philosophy,  there  was  still  many  a  learned  Scot 
whose  reputation  was  in  all  the  universities,  whose  Latin- 
ity  was  unexceptionable,  and  his  erudition  immense,  and 
to  whom  verses  were  addressed  and  books  dedicated  in 
every  center  of  letters.  One  of  the  most  distinguished  of 
these  scholars  was  George  Buchanan,  and  there  could  be 
no  better  type  of  the  man  of  letters  of  his  time,  in  whom 
the  liberality  of  the  cosmopolitan  was  united  with  the 
exclusiveness  of  the  member  of  a  very  strait  and  limited 
caste.  He  had  his  correspondents  in  all  the  cities  of  the 
Continent,  and  at  home  his  closest  associates  were  among 
the  highest  in  his  own  land.  Yet  he  was  the  son  of  a 
very  poor  man,  born  almost  a  peasant  and  dying  nearly 
as  poor  as  he  was  born.  From  wandering  scholar  and  peda- 
gogue he  became  the  preceptor  of  a  King  and  the  asso- 
ciate of  princes  ;  but  he  was  not  less  independent,  and  he 
was  scarcely  more  rich  in  the  one  position  than  the  other. 
His  pride  was  not  in  the  high  consultations  he  shared  or 
the  national  movements  in  which  he  had  his  part,  but  in 
his  fine  Latinity  and  the  elegant  turn  of  those  classical 
lines  which  all  his  learned  compeers  admired  and  ap- 
plauded. The  part  that  he  played  in  history  has  been 
made  to  look  odious  by  skilled  critics  ;  and  the  great  book 
in  which  he  recorded  the  deeds  of  his  contemporaries  and 
predecessors  has  been  assailed  violently  and  bitterly  as 
prejudiced,  partial,  and  untrue.  But  nobody  has  been 
able  to  attack  his  Latin  or  impair  the  renown  of  his 
scholarship ;  and  perhaps  had  he  himself  chosen  the 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.          365 

foundation  on  which  to  build  his  fame,  this  is  what  he 
would  have  preferred  above  all.  History  may  come  and 
politics  go,  and  the  principles  of  both  may  change  with 
the  generations,  but  Latin  verse  goes  on  forever  :  no 
false  ingenuity  of  criticism  can  pick  holes  in  the  deathless 
structure  of  an  art  with  which  living  principles  have  had 
nothing  to  do  for  a  thousand  years  and  more. 

Buchanan  was  born  in  a  farmhouse,  "a  lowly  cottage 
thatched  with  straw,"  in  the  year  1506,  in  Killearn  in  the 
country  of  Stirling  ;  but  not  without  gentle  blood  in  his 
veins,  the  gentility  so  much  prized  in  Scotland,  which 
makes  a  traceable  descent  even  from  the  roughest  of  country 
lairds  a  matter  of  distinction.  His  mother  was  a  Heriot, 
and  one  wonders  whether  there  might  not  be  some  con- 
nection between  the  great  scholar  and  the  worthy  goldsmith 
of  the  next  generation,  who  did  so  much  for  the  boys  of 
Edinburgh.  Buchanan's  best  and  most  trustworthy  biog- 
rapher, Dr.  Irving,1  pictures  to  his  readers  the  sturdy 
young  rustic  trudging  two  miles  in  all  weathers  to  the 
parish  school,  with  his  "  piece"  in  his  pocket,  and  already 
the  sonorous  harmonies  of  the  great  classic  tongues  be- 
ginning to  sound  in  his  ears — a  familiar  picture  which  so 
many  country  lads  born  to  a  more  modest  fame  have  em- 
ulated. In  the  parish  school  of  Killearn,  in  that  ancient 
far-away  Scotland  before  the  Reformation,  which  it  is  hard 
to  realize,  so  different  must  it  have  been  from  the  charac- 
teristic Scotch  school  of  all  our  traditions,  the  foundations 
of  Buchanan's  great  scholarship  and  power  were  laid.  His 
father  died  while  he  was  still  a  mere  child,  and  the  future 
man  of  letters  had  plenty  of  rough  rustic  work,  helping  his 
mother  about  the  farm  on  the  holidays,  which  must  have 
been  more  frequent  while  all  the  saints  of  the  calendar  were 

1 1  must  explain  that  this  chapter  was  written  before  the  pub- 
lication of  the  recent,  and  I  believe  excellent,  biography  of 
Buchanan  by  Mr.  P.  Hume. 


36G  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

still  honored.  Trees  of  his  planting,  his  biographer  says, 
writing  in  the  beginning  of  this  century,  still  grow  upon 
the  banks  of  the  little  stream  which  run  by  the  beautiful 
ruins  of  Dunblane,  and  which  watered  his  mother's  fields. 
When  he  had  reached  the  age  of  fourteen  an  uncle  Henot 
seeing  his  aptitude  for  study  sent  him  off,  it  would  seem 
alone,  in  all  his  rusticity  and  homeliness,  to  Paris — a  cu- 
rious sign  of  the  close  connection  between  Scotland  and 
France — where  he  carried  on  his  studies  or,  a  phrase  more 
appropriate  to  his  age,  learned  his  lessons  amid  the  throngs 
of  the  French  schools.  Before  he  was  sixteen,  however, 
his  uncle  died,  leaving  him  desolate  and  unprovided  for 
amongst  strangers  ;  and  the  boy  had  to  make  bis  way 
home  as  best  he  could,  half  begging,  half  working  his  pas- 
sage, stopping  perhaps  here  and  there  to  help  a  schoolboy, 
or  to  write  a  letter  for  the  unlearned,  and  earning  a  bed 
and  a  meal  as  poor  scholars  were  used  to  do.  He  remained 
a  year  in  his  mother's  house,  but  probably  was  no  longer 
wanted  for  the  uses  of  the  farm,  since  his  next  move  was 
to  the  wars.  He  himself  informs  us  in  the  sketch  o£  his 
life  which  he  wrote  in  his  old  age  that  he  was  "  moved 
with  a  desire  to  study  military  matters,"  a  desire  by  no 
means  unusual  at  seventeen.  These  were  the  days  when 
the  fantastic  French  Albany  was  at  the  head  of  affairs  in 
Scotland,  during  the  childhood  of  James  V,  and  the  coun- 
try was  in  great  disorder,  torn  with  private  quarrels  and 
dissensions.  It  is  evident  that  the  kind  uncle  being  dead 
and  affairs  in  general  so  little  propitious,  there  would  be 
little  chance  in  the  resources  of  the  farm  of  securing  fur- 
ther university  training  for  the  boy  who  had  his  own  way 
to  make  somehow  in  the  world  ;  and  perhaps  his  experience 
of  Paris  and  possession  of  the  French  language  (no  incon- 
siderable advantage  when  there  were  so  many  French  ad- 
venturers and  hangers  on  about  the  Court)  might  ba 
expected  to  give  him  chances  of  promotion  ;  while  his 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION. 


367 


service  perhaps  exempted  an   elder  brother,  of  more  use 
than  he  upon  the  farm,  from  needful  service,  when  his 


NORTH    DOORWAY,    HERIOT'S   HOSPITAL. 


feudal  lord  called  out  his  men   on  the  summons  of  the 
Regent. 

George  Buchanan  accordingly  followed  the  Laird's  flag 
upon  one  of  the  wildest  and  most  fruitless  of  Albany's 


368  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

expeditions  to  the  Border,  for  the  siege  of  "Wark.  The 
great  Border  stronghold,  the  size  and  wonderful  propor- 
tions of  which  astonished  the  Scots  army,  stands  forth 
again,  clear  as  when  it  first  struck  his  boyish  imagina- 
tion, in  the  description  which  Buchanan  gives  of  it  nearly 
half  a  century  later  in  his  history  of  that  time — where 
the  reader  can  still  see  the  discomfited  army  with  its  dis- 
tracted captains  and  councils,  and  futile  leader,  strag- 
gling back  through  the  deep  snow,  each  gloomy  band  find- 
ing its  way  as  best  it  could  to  its  own  district.  Buchanan 
would  seem  to  have  had  enough  of  fighting  ;  and  per- 
haps he  had  succeeded  in  proving  to  his  relatives  that 
neither  arms  nor  agriculture  were  his  vocation  ;  for  we 
next  find  him  on  his  way  to  St.  Andrews,  "  to  hear  John 
Major  who  was  then  teaching  dialectics  or  rather  soph- 
istry." Here  he  would  seem  to  have  studied  for  two 
years  ;  taking  his  degree  in  1525  at  the  age  of  nineteen. 
After  this  he  followed  Major  to  France,  whether  for  love 
of  his  master,  or  with  the  idea  that  Major's  interest  as  a 
doctor  of  the  Sorbonne  might  help  him  to  find  employ- 
ment in  Paris,  we  are  not  told.  One  of  the  many  stories 
to  his  prejudice  which  were  current  in  his  after-career 
describes  Buchanan  as  dependent  on  Major  and  ungrate- 
ful to  him,  repaying  with  a  cruel  epigram  the  kindness 
shown  him.  But  there  seems  absolutely  no  foundation 
for  this  accusation  which  was  probably  suggested  to  after- 
detractors  anxious  for  evidence  that  ingratitude,  as  one 
of  them  says,  "  was  the  great  and  unpardonable  blemish  of 
his  life  " — by  the  epigram  in  question,  in  which  he  distin- 
guishes his  professor  as  "solo  cognomine  Major."  It 
might  very  well  be,  however,  that  Buchanan  expected  a 
kind  recommendation  from  his  St.  Andrews  master,  such 
as  the  habit  of  the  kindly  Scots  was  apt  to  give,  and  some 
help  perhaps  in  procuring  employment,  and  that  the  fail- 
ure of  any  aid  of  this  description  betrayed  the  youth  into 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.    369 

the  national  tendency  to  harshness  of  speech  and  the  bit- 
ter jeer  at  one  who  was  great  only  in  his  name. 

A  stranger  with  nothing  but  his  learning  and  his  Latin 
epigrams  (though  these  last  were  a  more  marketable  com- 
modity then  than  now)  would  no  doubt  be  forlorn  enough, 
struggling  to  find  himself  standing-ground  and  a  living, 
subsisting  hardly  on  what  chance  employment  might  fall 
in  his  way,  and  reflecting,  as  most  adventurers  are  apt  to 
do,  how  easy  it  would  be  for  his  prosperous  countryman 
to  befriend  him.  Paris,  always  full  of  stir  and  commo- 
tion, had  at  this  moment  a  new  source  of  agitation  in  the 
rising  force  of  the  Reformation  principles  or,  as  Buchanan 
calls  it,  "  the  Lutheran  controversy,  which  was  already 
spreading  far  and  wide,"  and  into  the  midst  of  which  he  fell 
on  his  return.  Whether  his  interest  in  the  new  creed  did 
him  harm  in  his  search  for  an  establishment  we  are  not 
told  :  and  probably  the  "  struggle  with  adverse  fortune 
for  about  two  years "  which  he  records  was  merely  the 
difficulty  in  making  himself  known  which  affects  every 
young  man.  At  the  end  of  that  time  he  got  an  appoint- 
ment in  the  College  of  St.  Barbe  as  Professor  of  Grammar, 
and  was  henceforward  exempted  at  least  from  the  heart- 
sickening  conflict  with  absolute  poverty. 

Buchanan  would  seem  to  have  had  already  high  ambi- 
tions and  a  certainty  that  he  was  fit  for  something  better 
than  the  post  of  schoolmaster  in  a  French  college — for  not- 
withstanding his  eagerness  to  get  this  post  we  soon  find 
him  lamenting,  in  the  abstract  indeed,  but  in  a  manner 
too  particular  to  be  without  special  meaning,  the  small 
profit  of  intellectual  labor  and  the  weariness  of  a  continual 
toil  which  was  so  little  rewarded.  His  plaint  of  the  long 
night's  work,  the  burning  of  the  midnight  oil,  the  hunt 
through  dusty  and  rotting  manuscripts,  seems  touched 
with  a  tone  of  bitterness  unusual  in  the  student's  mur- 
murs over  a  lot  which  after  all  brings  him  as  much  pleasure 


370  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

as  weariness.     The  ambitious  lad  was  already,  it  is  evident, 
longing  for  more  brilliant  scenes. 

"  Pervigil  in  lucem  leota  atque  rolecta  revolves 

Et  putri  excuties  scripta  sepulta  situ : 
Saspe  caput  scalpes,  et  vivos  roseris  ungues, 
Irata  feries  pulpita  ssepe  manu." 

At  St.  Barbe,  however,  he  secured  a  noble  young  pupil 
of  his  own  country,  the  future  Earl  of  Cassilis,  who 
opened  to  him  a  brighter  way,  and  finally  led  him  back 
to  his  own  country  and  for  a  time  to  higher  fortune. 
When  young  King  James  came  to  Paris  to  meet  Magdalen 
of  France — with  the  sudden  pathetic  result  of  a  hasty 
romantic  marriage  soon  followed  by  the  poor  young  lady's 
death — young  Cassilis  was  still  there  with  his  tutor,  who 
was  himself  but  little  advanced  in  life  beyond  his  patron. 
And  it  was  presumably  in  the  train  of  the  royal  pair  that 
the  young  men  returned  home.  In  that  case  Buchanan 
must  have  witnessed  the  touching  scene  that  took  place  at 
the  poor  young  Queen's  disembarkation  when  she  kissed 
the  soil  of  her  new  country,  the  laud  which  was  to  afford 
her  only  a  grave.  Whether  dreams  of  Court  favor  and 
advancement  were  beginning  to  germinate  in  the  young 
scholar's  brain  as  he  was  thus  suddenly  swept  into  the  train 
of  royalty  there  is  nothing  to  say  ;  but  at  all  events  lie  ob- 
served everything  with  keen  attentive  eyes,  unconsciously 
collecting  the  best  materials  for  the  history  he  was  yet  to 
write.  And  it  is  clear  that  this  accidental  connection 
with  the  King  bore  after-fruit.  Buchanan  went  to  Ayr- 
shire with  his  young  patron  who  had  come  of  age,  and 
whose  studies  were  over  it  is  to  be  supposed  :  and  in 
the  leisure  of  that  relaxation  from  former  duties  amused 
himself  with  compositions  of  various  sorts,  and  in  parti- 
cular with  the  Somnium,  a  lively  poetical  satire  upon 
the  Franciscans.  The  monks,  who  had  been  the  favorite 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION. 

butt  of  all  the  ages,  were  more  thaii  ever  open  to  the  as- 
saults of  the  wits  now  that  the  general  sentiment  had 
turned  so  strongly  against  them,  and  Buchanan  said  no 
more  than  Dunbar  with  full  permission,  before  any  con- 
troversy arose,  had  said,  nor  half  so  much  as  David  Lind- 
say was  privileged  to  say.  And  Lord  Cassilis'  tutor  had 
all  the  freedom  of  a  private  individual  responsible  to  no  one 
while  he  lingered  at  his  young  patron's  castle,  pleased  to 
make  as  many  as  comprehended  his  Latin  laugh,  though 
probably  there  were  few  capable  of  appreciating  its  classi- 
cal beauty.  This,  however,  was  but  a  pastime,  and  his 
mind  again  began  to  turn  towards  Paris,  where  alone  per- 
haps there  was  to  be  found  the  kind  of  work  for  which  he 
was  most  fit  and  the  literary  applause  and  emulation  which 
were  dear  to  his  soul. 

He  was  about  to  set  out  when  the  King,  who  doubtless 
had  owed  some  entertainment  to  Buchanan  on  the  linger- 
ing homeward  journey,  and  who  must  have  been  well  aware 
of  his  character  and  gifts,  made  him  pause  by  offering 
him  the  tutorship  of  his  illegitimate  son,  one  among  several 
for  whom  James,  so  young  as  he  was,  not  more  than 
twenty-five,  was  already  responsible,  another  James 
Stewart,  though  not  the  notable  James  who  was  afterwards 
the  Regent  Murray.  This  appointment  brought  Buchanan 
at  once  within  the  charmed  circle  of  the  Court,  and  prob- 
ably prepared  the  way  for  all  his  after-honors.  But  his 
career  in  Edinburgh  at  this  moment  was  not  especially 
glorious.  Delighted  by  the  Somnium,  which  had  been 
read  to  him  and  applauded  by  all  the  obsequious  audience 
round,  James,  who  though  a  good  Catholic  liked  a  clever 
assault  upon  the  priests  as  much  as  any  one,  recommended 
the  new  member  of  his  household  to  resume  the  subject. 
It  is  supposed  that  the  Gray  Friars  from  their  great  lodg- 
ment so  near  the  Court  had  found  fault  with  the  appoint- 
ment of  Buchanan  and  assailed  himself  as  a  profane  and 


372  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

scoffing  heretic.  It  was  certainly  strange  that  a  man  who 
had  adopted  the  heresies  of  Luther  should  be  appointed 
to  the  care  of  the  son  of  a  Catholic  King,  but  Buchanan 
it  is  probable  kept  his  religious  opinions  to  himself,  and  it 
was  not  necessary  to  be  a  Protestant  to  give  vent  to  the 
broadest  satires  against  the  monks  and  friars  who  had 
been  for  so  long  the  least  defensible  portion  of  the  Cath- 
olic establishment.  Buchanan,  however,  was  not  bold 
enough  to  fall  upon  his  enemies  as  Sir  David  Lindsay  did. 
A  poor  man  and  a  dependant,  had  he  the  highest  spirit  in 
the  world,  must  still  bear  traces  of  the  yoke  to  which 
circumstances  have  accustomed  him,  and  a  scholar  is  not 
necessarily  brave.  lie  shrank  from  encountering  the  great 
and  powerful  community  of  the  Gray  Friars  in  the  eye  of 
day,  and  instead  of  the  lively  assault  expected  from  him, 
temporized  and  wrote  something  which  was  neither  sat- 
isfactory to  the  King  who  wanted  a  laugh  at  the  expense 
of  the  monks,  nor  to  the  monks  who  were  more  enraged 
by  the  covert  character  of  a  satire  which  could  be  read 
both  ways,  than  they  would  have  been  by  straight-for- 
ward abuse.  The  dissatisfaction  of  James  moved  Bu- 
chanan to  bolder  measures,  and  after  his  half-hearted  at- 
tempt to  compromise  himself  as  little  as  possible,  he  was 
goaded  into  the  most  virulent  use  of  his  pen,  and  cut 
down  his  adversaries  with  the  sharp  shafts  of  his  Francis- 
canus  with  a  vigor  and  malice  which  left  nothing  to  be 
desired.  The  Court  had  its  laugh  which  was  resounding 
and  long,  but  neither  King  nor  courtiers  had  any  penalty 
to  pay  for  the  pranks  which  the  classical  Samson  wrought 
for  their  pleasure. 

Though  they  were  thus  mocked  in  high  places,  the 
Churchmen,  however,  had  lost  none  of  their  power,  and 
even  the  protection  of  the  royal  household  did  not  avail  the 
audacious  poet.  In  the  raid  upon  heretics  which  was 
made  in  the  beginning  of  the  year  1539  Buchanan's  name 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.     373 

was  included  among  the  guilty.  He  himself  tells  us  that 
"  Cardinal  Beatoun  bought  his  life  from  the  King  with 
money  "  :  making  it  probably  the  price  of  some  concession 
that  this  audacious  assailant  should  be  delivered  into  the 
hands  of  the  Church.  At  all  events  the  terrified  scholar 
had  no  confidence  in  the  power  or  will  of  his  Sovereign  to 
protect  him,  and,  scared  by  the  flames  of  various  burnings 
which  had  taken  place  throughout  the  kingdom,  directed 
his  best  wits  to  finding  a  way  of  safety.  He  escaped 
through  a  window  while  his  keepers  were  asleep,  some  say 
from  the  Castle  of  St.  Andrews,  some  from  that  of  Edin- 
burgh. His  own  account  is  more  simple  and  goes  into  no 
detail.  "  He  made  his  way  into  England,  eluding  the 
guards  set  for  him."  But  England  was  not  more  secure 
than  Scotland.  The  quick-witted  fugitive  found  Henry 
VIII  impartially  burning  victims  from  both  sides,  on  the 
same  day  at  the  same  stake,  and  considered  this  sublime 
indifference  as  still  more  dangerous  than  the  strife  of 
Scotch  affairs.  "  His  old  familiarity  with  the  French,  and 
the  singular  hospitality  of  that  nation,"  led  him  back  to 
the  city  which  was  then  the  favorite  resort  of  all  the  Muses. 
When,  however  Buchanan  arrived  in  Paris  he  found  that 
his  special  enemy,  Cardinal  Beatoun,  had  preceded  him 
there  as  ambassador  from  King  James,  and,  alarmed  by 
so  dangerous  a  vicinity,  he  accepted  at  once  an  offer  made 
to  him  by  Andrew  Govra,  one  of  his  colleagues  of  former 
times,  who  had  been  appointed  to  the  charge  of  a  college 
in  Bordeaux,  and  removed  thither  with  the  greatest  ex- 
pedition before  his  foe  could  be  made  aware  of  his  presence 
in  Paris. 

This  was  in  the  end  of  the  year  1539,  when  Buchanan 
had  attained  the  age  of  thirty-three.  His  residence  in  the 
capital  of  the  famous  province  of  Gascony  seems  to  have 
been  active  and  happy.  He  was  Professor  of  Latin  in  the 
college  ;  perhaps  the  terms  would  be  more  just  if  we  said 


374  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

he  was  Latin  master  in  one  of  the  most  flourishing  and 
successful  of  French  schools ;  but  our  neighbors  still 
prefer  the  more  high-sounding  nomenclature.  The  great 
Garonne  was  not  full  of  ships  and  trade  at  that  period  as 
it  is  now  ;  but  Bordeaux  was  one  of  the  old  capital  cities 
of  France,  possessing  a  rank  which  now  belongs  to  no 
French  provincial  town,  and  had  its  own  characteristic 
society,  its  scholars  and  provincial  statesmen.  But  the 
most  important  and  notable  human  being  of  all  whom 
Buchanan  found  in  his  new  sphere  was  a  certain  small 
seigneur  of  Gascony,  six  years  old,  and  already  an  accom- 
plished Latinist,  having  learned  no  other  language  from 
his  cradle,  bearing  the  name  of  Michel  de  Montaigne  and 
already  a  little  philosopher  as  well  as  scholar.  The  great 
essayist  speaks  afterwards  of  "  George  Buchanan,  the  cele- 
brated Scotch  poet,"  as  one  of  his  masters,  but  he  does  .not 
say  whether  Buchanan  was  the  enlightened  pedagogue  who 
connived  at  his  endless  reading  and  let  him  off  as  much 
as  was  possible  from  other  less  congenial  studies. 

Buchanan,  however,  must  have  found  the  cheerful 
southern  city,  with  its  Parliament  and  its  colleges,  and  all 
the  teeming  life  and  restless  energies  of  the  Gascon  race, 
not  unlike  a  kind  of  warmer  and  more  brilliant  Scotland, 
full  of  national  brag  and  gallantry,  a  congenial  sphere. 
He  had  been  for  a  long  time  shedding  complimentary 
verses,  sonnets,  dedications,  about  him  after  the  manner 
of  the  time,  serving  out  to  everybody  who  was  kind  to 
him  a  little  immortality  in  the  shape  of  classic  thanks  or 
compliment  :  but  in  Bordeaux  he  besran  to  produce  works 
of  more  apparent  importance,  "  four  tragedies"  intended 
primarily  for  the  use  of  his  college,  where  it  was  the 
custom  to  represent  yearly  a  play,  generally  of  an  allegori- 
cal character — one  of  the  fantastical  miracle  plays  which 
delighted  the  time,  and  which  were  often  as  profane  in 
reality  as  they  were  religious  in  pretense.  The  great 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.  375 

classicist  considered  his  boys  to  be  wasting  their  faculties 
in  representing  such  inferior  performances,  but  humored 
the  prevailing  taste  so  much  as  to  choose  two  Scriptural 
subjects,  Jephthah  and  John  the  Baptist,  alternately  with 
the  Medea  and  Alcestis.  He  "  was  successful  beyond  his 
hopes,"  he  says,  in  these  efforts.  In  all  of  the  plays  the 
little  Montaigne  was  one  of  the  chief  performers.  "Be- 
fore a  fit  age,  Alter  ab  undecimo  turn  me  vix  ceperat  an- 
nus"  says  that  great  writer,  "  I  sustained  the  first  parts 
in  the  Latin  tragedies  of  Buchanan,  which  were  played  in 
our  College  de  Guienne,  with  dignity."  The  little  scene 
is  pleasant  to  think  of,  not  too  long  out  of  date  to  recall 
the  scholastic  pastimes  of  to-day,  though  there  is  no 
Buchanan  to  produce  plays  for  Eton  or  Harrow,  and  prob- 
ably no  young  Montaigne  to  play  the  hero.  The  learned 
Scot,  with  his  peasant  breeding  no  doubt  making  him  still 
more  conscious  of  the  strain  of  gentle  blood  in  his  veins, 
a  little  rough,  irascible,  and  impatient  in  nature,  notwith- 
standing the  elegance  of  his  Latin  speech,  and  the  little 
noble,  gentilhomme  to  his  fingers'  end,  half  respectful, 
half  contemptuous  of  the  pedagogue,  make  a  picturesque 
contrast. 

Buchanan,  however,  did  not  feel  himself  safe  even  in 
Bordeaux,  where  he  remained  only  three  years.  It  is  said 
that  Cardinal  Beatoun  wrote  to  the  Archbishop  recom- 
mending his  arrest,  and  the  Franciscan  community  in  the 
Gascon  city,  which  had  heard  from  their  brethren  of  his 
offenses  against  the  Order,  kept  an  unfriendly  eye  upon 
him,  ready  to  take  advantage  of  any  hostile  opportunity. 
He  therefore  returned  to  Paris,  where  in  a  similar  but  ap- 
parently more  obscure  position  he  spent  some  years.  In 
1547  he  was  very  glad  to  accompany  Govra,  who  had 
brought  him  to  Bordeaux,  and  whom  Montaigne  describes 
as  "beyond  comparison  the  greatest  Principal  in  France," 
to  his  native  country  Portugal,  whither  his  King  had  sum- 


376  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

inoned  him  in  order  that  his  talents  might  he  of  use  to 
his  own  nation  as  the  head  of  the  new  University  of  Coim- 
bra.  It  would  seem  that  Govra  carried  his  whole  staff 
along  with  him  to  Portugal.  "  Most  of  them,"  Buchanan 
says,  "were  men  bound  to  him  (Buchanan)  for  many 
years  in  the  ties  of  closest  friendship,  men  who  were  re- 
nowned for  their  works  all  over  the  world,"  and  in  whose 
society  the  Scottish  scholar  felt  that  he  would  be  not  among 
strangers  but  among  kinsmen  and  friends.  A  still  stronger 
inducement  was,  that  while  all  Europe  was  ablaze  with  wars 
and  religious  controversies,  that  one  little  kingdom  was  at 
peace.  The  band  of  scholars  thus  removed  together  to 
their  new  sphere,  like  a  hive  of  bees,  and  at  first  all  went 
well  with  them  ;  but  they  had  not  been  long  in  Portugal 
when  Govra  died,  leaving  them  without  any  powerful  pat- 
ronage or  protection,  a  band  of  strangers,  no  doubt  ap- 
pearing in  the  aspect  of  supplanters  of  native  talent  to 
many  hostile  lookers-on.  Men  of  their  pursuits  and  modes 
of  thought,  aliens  in  an  unknown  country,  perhaps  suffi- 
ciently free  of  speech  to  alarm  the  narrow-minded,  no  great 
observers  of  ritual  or  ceremony,  were  too  likely  under  any 
circumstances  to  attract  the  notice  of  the  Inquisition  in  a 
place  so  wholly  given  over  to  its  sway. 

Buchanan  was  probably  the  most  distinguished  among 
this  band  of  scholars  ;  and  a  vague  report  that  he  had 
written  something  against  the  Franciscans  attached  to  him 
a  special  prejudice.  As  nobody  knew  what  this  work  was, 
it  could  not  be  brought  formally  against  him,  but  lesser 
crimes  were  found,  such  as  that  of  eating  meat  in  Lent  and 
speaking  disrespectfully  of  monks,  sins  which  even  in 
Portugal  most  people  were  more  or  less  guilty  of.  Bu- 
chanan, however,  had  no  very  dreadful  penalty  to  bear.  He 
was  imprisoned  for  some  months  in  a  monastery,  that  lie 
might  be  brought  by  the  monks'  instruction  to  a  better 
way  of  thinking.  The  prisoner  was  fair  enough  to  admit 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.          377 

that  he  found  his  jailors  by  no  means  bad  men  or  unkindly 
in  their  treatment  of  him — an  acknowledgement  which  is 
greatly  to  his  credit,  since  prejudice  was  equally  strong  on 
both  sides  and  a  persecuted  scholar  was  as  little  apt  to  see 
the  good  qualities  of  his  persecutors  as  they  were  to  accept 
his  satires.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  what  the 
homely  fathers  thought  of  him,  this  dreadful  freethinker 
and  satirist  committed  to  their  care  for  instruction.  He 
found  them  "entirely  ignorant  of  religious  questions," 
though  evidently  so  much  less  hostile  than  he  had  ex- 
pected, and  occupied  his  enforced  leisure  in  making  his 
translation  of  the  Psalms,  a  monument  of  elegant  verse 
and  fine  Latinity,  for  which  the  quiet  of  the  convent  and 
the  absence  of  interruptions  must  have  been  most  favor- 
able. He  would  seem  to  have  corrected  the  bad  impres- 
sion he  had  at  first  made,  by  these  devout  studies  and 
his  behavior  generally  ;  for  when  he  was  released  the 
King  would  not  let  him  go,  but  gave  him  a  daily  allowance 
for  his  expenses  until  some  fit  position  could  be  found  for 
him.  But  there  was  evidently  nothing  in  Lisbon  which 
tempted  Buchanan  to  stay.  He  languished  in  the  little 
capital  separated  from  all  congenial  society  and  sighed 
for  his  beloved  Paris  which  he  addressed  as  his  mistress, 
writing  a  poem,  Desiderium  Lutetice  in  praise  of  and  long- 
ing for  the  presence  of  that  nymph  whom  so  many  have 
wooed. 

At  last  he  contrived  to  escape  in  a  ship  bound  for  Eng- 
land, which,  however,  he  found  as  little  congenial  as  Por- 
tugal, and  with  as  short  a  delay  as  possible  he  returned  to 
that  Lutetia  which  he  loved.  Arrived  there,  he  would 
seem  to  have  resumed  his  old  work  as  schoolmaster  in  one 
of  the  colleges,  no  way  advanced,  despite  his  fame  and 
adventures,  from  the  first  post  he  had  held  when  little 
more  than  a  boy,  though  he  was  now  between  forty  and 
fifty,  and  one  of  the  best-known  scholars  of  his  time.  A 


378  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

few  years  later  ke  became  a  member  of  the  household  of 
the  Marechal  de  Brissac  as  tutor  to  his  son,  and  with  him 
spent  five  years,  partly  in  Italy  in  the  province  of  Liguria, 
where  the  Marechal  was  governor.  For  the  first  time  he 
would  seem  to  have  been  treated  with  honor,  and  his 
advice  taken  in  affairs  of  state  and  public  business  generally, 
and  here  he  tells  us  he  devoted  much  of  his  time  to  the 
study  of  sacred  literature,  so  that  he  might  be  able  to 
form  a  matured  judgment  as  to  the  controversies  which 
were  tearing  the  world  asunder.  In  the  year  1560,  his 
services  being  no  longer  required  by  his  pupil,  Buchanan 
at  last  decided  upon  returning  to  his  native  country. 
"  The  despotism  of  the  Guises,"  he  says,  "  was  over,  and 
the  religious  excitement  had  begun  to  calm  down."  It 
would  appear  that  though  his  convictions  had  so  long  been 
on  the  side  of  the  Reform,  he  had  not  yet  publicly  made 
himself  known  as  a  member  of  that  party.  And  his  return 
to  Scotland  was  made  with  the  full  intention  so  to  do. 

Such  was  the  wandering  and  uncertain  career  of  the 
scholar  and  man  of  letters  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Per- 
haps Buchanan's  temper  was  less  compliant,  his  character 
less  easily  adaptable  to  the  society  in  which  he  found 
himself,  than  most ;  but  it  may  be  doubted  whether  this 
was  the  cause  of  the  very  small  advancement  in  life  to 
which  he  had  come,  since  he  was  complaisant  enough  to 
indite  many  fine  verses  in  praise  of  people  who  gave  him  a 
banquet  or  a  shelter,  and  he  seems  to  have  gone  nowhere 
without  making  friends.  He  had  got  abundant  reputa- 
tion, however,  if  not  much  else,  and  was  known  wherever 
he  went  as  the  celebrated  poet,  which  doubtless  was  agree- 
able to  him  if  not  very  profitable.  But  it  gives  us  a  cer- 
tain insight  into  the  life  of  the  literary  class  in  his  time 
to  see  so  notable  a  man  wandering  from  one  place  to  an- 
other, professor  or  regent  or  private  tutor  as  it  happened, 
never  well  off,  never  secure,  often  in  the  position  of  a  de- 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.  379 

pendant.  When  Milton  speaks  of  the  "others,"  poets 
whom  he  thus  adopts  into  a  kind  of  equality,  who  "  use  " 

"To  sport  with  Amaryllis  in  the  shade, 
Or  with  the  tangles  of  Nsera's  hair," 

it  is  supposed  to  be  Buchanan  whom  he  refers  to,  which 
is  perhaps  honor  enough  for  a  modern  classicist ;  though 
Amaryllis,  the  critics  say,  was  no  more  individual  a  love 
than  the  Lutetia  before  mentioned,  for  whom  he  pined. 
Yet  though  all  the  scholars  of  his  time  admired  and 
followed  him  he  had  to  return  again  and  again  to  his  Latin 
grammar,  and  to  small  boys  not  so  wonderful  as  Michel  of 
Montaigne  ;  and  when  he  returned  to  Edinburgh  at  the 
age  of  fifty-five  his  worldly  position  was  scarcely  better 
than  when  he  got  his  first  appointment  at  twenty-one  to 
the  College  of  St.  Barbe.  His  life  was  now,  however,  to 
take  another  form. 

Buchanan's  return  to  Scotland  "after  the  despotism  of 
the  Guises  was  over"  corresponded  very  nearly  with  the 
return  of  Queen  Mary.  It  is  surmised  that  he  may  have 
traveled  in  the  suite  of  "  the  Lord  James,"  the  future 
Earl  of  Murray,  who  paid  his  sister  a  visit  very  soon  after 
the  death  of  her  husband,  King  Francis  :  certainly  nothing 
could  be  more  probable  than  that  the  Scotch  scholar,  seek- 
ing an  opportunity  to  return  to  his  native  country,  should 
have  joined  himself  to  the  train  of  the  prince,  who  probably 
had  been  acquainted  in  his  childhood  with  his  brother's 
tutor,  and  who  was  himself  a  man  of  education  and  a  patron 
of  literature.  If  this  guess  should  be  correct  it  would 
account  for  Buchanan's  rapid  promotion  to  Court  favor. 
Edinburgh  was  in  a  state  of  happy  expectation  when  the 
poet  came  back.  What  was  virtually  a  new  reign,  though 
Mary  had  been  the  nominal  possessor  of  the  throne  from 
her  birth,  was  about  to  begin ;  the  fame  of  the  young 
Q.ueen  had  no  doubt  been  blown  fa'r  and  wide  about  the 


380  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

country  on  every  breeze — that  fame  of  beauty,  sweetness, 
and  grace  which  is  the  most  universally  attractive  of  all 
reputations,  and  which  made  the  proud  Scots  prouder  still 
in  the  possession  of  such  a  prodigy.  That  there  were 
graver  thoughts  among  the  very  serious  and  important 
party,  who  felt  the  safety  of  their  newly-established  and 
severely-reformed  Church  to  be  in  doubt  if  not  in  danger, 
and  who  hated  and  feared  "  the  mass  "  and  the  priests  who 
performed  it  as  they  did  the  devil  (with  whom  indeed  they 
were  more  amiably  familiar),  does  not  alter  the  fact  that 
the  anticipation  of  Mary's  return  was  a  happy  one,  and  her 
welcome  cordial  and  without  drawback.  Nobody  knew 
that  there  had  been  a  project  of  a  landing  at  Aberdeen, 
where  Huntly  and  the  other  northern  lords  had  proposed 
to  meet  her  with  twenty  thousand  men,  thus  enabling  her 
to  march  upon  her  capital  as  a  conquering  heroine  of  the 
old  faith,  putting  Satan,  in  the  shape  of  John  Knox,  under 
her  feet.  Had  she  accepted  this  proposal  how  strangely 
might  the  face  of  history  have  been  changed  !  But  there 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Mary  desired  to  come  to  Scot- 
land with  fire  and  flame,  any  more  than  there  is  that  her 
destruction  was  a  foregone  conclusion.  She  came  with 
many  prognostics  of  success,  though  also  Avith  a  continual 
possibility  that  "  terrible  tragedies  "  might  come  of  it  ; 
and  for  some  time  it  would  appear  that  her  Court  was  as 
seemly  and  pleasant  as  any  Court  could  be,  full  of  youth- 
ful pleasure  and  delight  as  became  her  years  and  the  gay 
youthful  company  that  surrounded  her,  but  also  of  graver 
matters  and  thoughts  and  purposes  becoming  a  noble 
Queen. 

The  first  notice  we  have  of  Buchanan  after  his  return 
to  Scotland  is  conveyed  in  a  letter  from  Randolph,  the 
English  envoy  in  Edinburgh,  in  which  the  question, 
"  Who  is  fittest  to  be  sent  from  this  Queen  to  attende 
upon  the  Queen's  Majesty  (Elizabeth)  for  the  better  con- 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.  3gl 

tinuance  of  intelligence  with  her  Highness  ?  "  is  discussed. 
"  Of  any  that  I  know,"  says  the  representative  of  England, 
"  David  Forrest  is  likeliest,  and  most  desireth  it.  There, 
is  with  the  Queen  one  called  Mr.  George  Buchanan,  a 
Scottishe  man  very  well  learned  that  was  schollemaster 
unto  Monsieur  de  Brissac's  son,  very  godly  and  honest, 
whom  I  have  always  judged  fitter  than  any  other  I  know." 
5  This  was  written  in  January  1562,  and  shows  that  Bu- 
chanan was  at  that  time  about  the  Court  and  in  the  way  of 
employment,  though  he  was  not  then  chosen  as  confidential 
messenger  between  the  two  queens.  A  little  later  he  is 
visible  in  the  exercise  of  his  old  vocation  as  the  tutor  of 
Mary  herself.  "  The  Queen  readeth  daily  after  her  dinner," 
says  the  same  careful  narrator,  "  instructed  by  a  learned 
man,  Mr.  George  Buchanan,  somewhat  of  Lyvie."  These 
few  words  set  before  us  a  curious  scene.  Mary  at  the 
height  of  her  good  resolutions  and  good  beginning,  keep- 
ing up  her  literature  as  well  as  all  her  pleasures,  her 
hunting,  her  riding,  her  music,  her  embroideries,  all  the 
accomplishments  of  her  royal  training — makes  a  delight- 
ful picture.  She  had  the  habit  of  working  with  her  needle 
like  any  innocent  lady  in  her  bower,  while  the  lords  of  her 
Council,  grim  lords  whom  it  is  strange  to  associate  with 
this  pretty  pose  of  royal  simplicity,  discussed  around  her 
the  troublous  affairs  of  the  most  turbulent  kingdom  in 
Christendom  :  and  after  her  dinner,  in  the  languor  of  the 
afternoon,  one  wonders  if  the  lovely  lady  was  diligent  over 
\QY  Livy  or  rather  seduced  her  preceptor  to  talk  about 
Paris,  that  much-desired  Lutetia  which  he  had  so  longed 
for,  as  no  doubt  in  the  bottom  of  her  heart  she  too  was 
sometimes  doing.  The  two  so  unlike  each  other — the 
beautiful  young  princess  not  quite  twenty,  the  old  scholar 
and  schoolmaster  though  a  poet  withal,  drawing  near  the 
extreme  boundaries  of  middle  age,  and  worn  with  much 
struggling  against  the  world  and  poverty — would  yet  find 


382  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

a  subject  and  mutual  interest  far  apart  from  the  book, 
which  made  endless  conversation  possible,  and  many  a 
pleasant  comparison  of  experiences  so  different.  Buchanan 
had  dedicated  a  book  to  one  of  those  fair  and  famous  Mar- 
garets who  adorned  Paris  at  that  epoch,  and  presumably 
knew  her  or  something  of  her  state,  and  could  understand 
her  Majesty  of  Scotland's  allusions,  and  knew  something 
of  the  gossip  of  the  Court,  or  at  least  could  pretend  to  do 
so,  as  a  man  who  was  aware  what  was  expected  of  a 
courtier.  It  is  possible  indeed  that  Mary  was  truly  stu- 
dious, and  liked  her  Livy  as  her  contemporary  did,  the 
gentle  Lady  Jane  who  had  so  sad  a  fate  ;  but  it  is  much 
more  likely,  we  think,  that  the  big  volume  lay  open,  while 
the  scholar's  eyes  glowed  and  shone  with  cherished  remi- 
niscences of  that  enchanting  city  in  which  his  best  days 
had  flown,  and  Mary  Stewart  responded  to  his  recollections 
with  all  her  gay  wit  and  charm  of  pleasant  speech.  Many 
are  the  tragic  associations  of  Holyrood  :  it  is  well  to  note 
that  other  companions  more  sober  than  Signor  Davie, 
more  calm  than  Chastelar,  shared  now  and  then  the  Queen's 
leisure.  Grave  commentators  conclude  that  it  spoke  well 
for  her  Majesty's  Latinity  that  Buchanan  put  her  on  Livy  ; 
for  my  part  I  have  no  doubt  that  these  two  unlikely  gossips, 
after  perhaps  a  sentence  or  two,  forgot  about  Livy,  and 
talked  of  their  Paris  all  the  time. 

Buchanan  took  the  opportunity  of  this  quiet  and  pros- 
perous period,  when  all  was  hopeful  in  the  nation  as  well 
as  in  his  own  prospects,  to  publish  the  poetical  version  of 
the  Psalms  which  had  occupied  his  enforced  leisure  in  the 
Portuguese  monastery  years  before.  They  had  not  yet 
seen  the  light  in  a  complete  form,  although  several  of 
them  had  been  included  by  the  well-known  printer  Etienne, 
or  Stephanus  as  he  is  more  generally  called,  in  a  collection 
of  similar  translations  by  several  learned  hands,  among 
which  he  gives  in  a  flattering  preface  by  far  the  highest 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.  383 

place  to  Buchanan.  The  terms  of  laudation  in  which  he 
speaks,  and  which  it  was  the  fashion  of  the  time  to 
employ,  may  be  judged  from  the  following  extracts  quoted 
by  Irving.  After  commenting  upon  the  general  excel- 
lence of  his  friend's  work,  superior  to  all  others,  he  adds, — 

''There  is  nothing  more  honorable,  nothing  more  splendid, 
than  after  excelling  all  others,  at  length  to  excel  one's  self  ;  so 
in  my  judgment  you  have  most  happily  attained  to  this  praise 
in  your  version  of  these  psalms.  For  in  translating  the  other 
odes  of  this  sacred  poet,  you  have  been  Buchanan,  that  is,  you 
have  been  as  conspicuous  among  the  other  paraphrasists  as  the 
moon  among  the  smaller  luminaries  ;  but  when  you  come  to  the 
hundred  and  fourth  psalm  you  surpass  Buchanan  ;  so  that  you 
do  not  now  shine  like  the  moon  among  the  lesser  luminaries  but 
like  the  sun  you  seem  to  obscure  all  the  stars  by  your  brilliant 
rays." 

The  community  of  letters  in  these  days  was  in  the  habit 
of  expressing  the  intensest  mutual  admiration,  except 
when  a  contrary  feeling  not  less  strong  animated  their 
minds  and  pens.  Buchanan  dedicated  his  psalms  to  his 
beautiful  pupil  and  patron  in  terms  as  highflown  but 
more  elegant,  and  with  a  justifiable  wealth  of  hyperbolical 
adulation.  It  would  be  an  undue  demand  upon  humanity 
to  require  nothing  more  than  plain  fact  in  a  poetical  ad- 
dress to  a  young  Sovereign  so  gracious,  so  accomplished, 
and  so  fair.  And  yet  in  the  extraordinary  circumstances, 
so  soon  to  be  swallowed  up  in  the  abyss  of  a  catastrophe 
still  more  extraordinary,  there  is  little  extravagance  in 
Buchanan's  address,  of  which  we  shall  attempt  a  transla- 
tion though  most  unworthy. 

O  ^ 

"  Lady,  who  bears  the  scepter  of  this  land 

By  endless  forefathers  transmitted  down, 

Whose  worth  exceeds  thy  fortune  far,  as  stand 
Thy  virtues  o'er  thy  years,  and  the  renown 

Of  noble  gifts  over  thy  noble  line. 

And  spirit  o'er  thy  sex  : — without  a  frown 


884:  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

Accept  in  this  poor  Latin  garb  of  mine 

The  noble  songs  of  Israel's  prophet  king. 
Far  from  Parnassus  and  the  classic  shore, 
From  under  northern  stars  my  gift  I  bring  ; 
Nor  had  I  ventured  such  an  ill-born  thing 
To  lay  before  thee,  but  for  fearing  more 
To  miss  the  little  chance  of  pleasing  thee, 
Wkose  understanding  gives  a  merit  not  in  me." 

Buchanan  followed  his  publication  by  various  others, 
and  strangely  enough,  while  still  enjoying  the  royal 
favor  brought  out  his  Franciscanus,  his  Fratres  Frater- 
rimi,  and  other  satires  specially  directed  against  the 
monks  :  which,  however,  seem  to  have  done  him  no  harm, 
for  he  talks  in  1567  of  "  the  occupations  of  a  court," 
which  kept  him  from  bestowing  the  time  and  trouble  he 
wished  on  the  preparation  of  his  various  books  for  the 
press.  Whether  the  readings  from  Livy  went  on  all  this 
time  we  have  no  record  ;  but  when  Queen  Mary  married 
Darnley,  and  when  her  son  was  born,  Buchanan  would 
still  seem  to  have  occupied  the  position  of  Court  poet,  and 
celebrated  both  events  by  copies  of  verses  as  flattering,  as 
well  as  elegant,  as  the  dedication.  From  the  first  of  these 
we  may  quote  the  lines  in  which  Buchanan  proves,  not- 
withstanding his  long  absence  and  cosmopolitan  training, 
that  the  native  brag  of  the  Scot  was  as  strong  in  him  as  if 
he  had  never  left  his  native  shores.  It  could  scarcely  be 
to  flatter  either  of  the  bridal  pair  that  he  burst  forth  into 
this  celebration  of  l(  the  ancient  Kingdom." 

"  For  herein  lies  the  glory  of  the  Scot, 
To  fill  the  woods  with  clamor  of  the  chase  ; 
To  swim  the  stream,  and  cold  and  heat  defy, 
And  hunger  and  fatigue.     To  guard  their  land 
Not  with  deep  trench  or  wall,  but  with  the  force 
Of  arms,  contemning  life  for  honors  sake  ; 
To  keep  their  troth,  to  reverence  the  bonds 
Of  friendship,  to  love  virtue  and  not  gifts, 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.          385 

Such  acts  as  these  secured  throughout  the  land 

Freedom  and  peace,  when  war  raged  o'er  the  world, 

And  every  other  nation  was  constrained 

To  change  its  native  laws  for  foreign  yoke, 

The  fury  of  the  Goth  stopped  here  ;  the  onslaught  fierce 

Of  the  strong  Saxon,  and  the  tribes  more  strong, 

The  Dane  and  Norman,  who  had  conquered  him, 

Nay,  in  our  ancient  annals  live  the  tales 

Of  Roman  victory  stayed— the  Latin  tide 

Which  neither  south  wind  checked,  nor  Parthia  bleak, 

Nor  waves  of  Meroi,  nor  the  rushing  Rhine, 

Was  here  arrested  by  this  only  race 

Before  whose  face  the  Roman  paused  and  held 

The  frontier  of  his  empire,  not  by  lines 

Of  hill  and  river,  but  by  walls  and  towns, 

By  Caledonian  axes  oft  assailed, 

Laying  all  hope  of  further  gain  aside." 

In  the  meantime,  while  these  poetical  performances 
went  on,  and  the  scholar  occupied  his  leisure  in  preparing 
for  publication  his  scattered  works — an  occupation  which 
of  itself  proved  the  quiet  and  good  hope  in  which  he  was 
living — more  serious  labors  also  occupied  his  mind.  Not- 
withstanding his  tutorship  at  Court,  Buchanan  took  ad- 
vantage of  the  moment  to  declare  himself  an  adherent  of 
the  newly  formed  and  very  belligerent  Church,  now  settled 
and  accepted  on  the  basis  of  the  Reformation,  but  with 
little  favor  at  Court  as  has  been  seen.  He  not  only  put 
himself  and  his  erudition  at  once  on  that  side  in  the  most 
open  and  public  way,  but  sat  in  the  General  Assembly,  or 
at  least  in  one  of  the  Assemblies  which  preceded  the  for- 
mal creation  of  that  great  ecclesiastical  parliament,  in 
1563,  less  than  two  years  after  his  arrival  in  Scotland. 
Nor  was  his  position  that  of  a  simple  member  taking  part 
in  the  debates  ;  he  seems  to  have  sat  upon  various  special 
committees,  and  to  have  been  entrusted,  along  with  several 
others,  to  revise  the  Book  of  Discipline,  the  standard  of 
order  and  governance  :  and  this  while  he  was  still  a  cour- 
25 


386  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

tier,  Mary's  tutor  and  gossip,  holding  his  place  in  her 
presence,  and  celebrating  the  events  of  the  time  in  courtly 
and  scholarly  verse — a  curious  instance  of  toleration  in  a 
time  which  scarcely  knew  its  name. 

To  recompense  Buchanan's  services  Queen  Mary  granted 
him,  in  the  year  1564,  an  allowance  from  the  forfeited 
Church  property,  making  him  pensioner  of  the  Abbey  of 
Crossraguel,  with  an  income  of  five  hundred  pounds  Scots 
— a  sum  very  different,  it  need  not  be  said,  from  the  same 
sum  in  English  money.  The  abbey  had  been  held  by  a 
Kennedy,  the  brother  of  Buchanan's  first  pupil,  the  Earl 
of  Cassilis,  and  very  probably  he  had  thus  some  knowledge 
of  and  connection  with  the  locality,  where  he  had  gone 
with  Cassilis  many  years  before.  The  grant  would  seem 
for  some  years  to  have  profited  him  little,  the  then  Earl 
of  Cassilis,  son  of  his  gentler  Gilbert,  having  little  in- 
clination to  let  go  his  hold  of  the  rents  which  his  uncle 
had  drawn,  either  in  favor  of  a  new  abbot  or  of  the  pen- 
sioner ;  and  the  cruelties  with  which  this  fierce  Ayrshire 
lord  treated  the  functionary  who  succeeded  his  uncle  seem 
incredible  to  hear  of.  George  Buchanan  kept  out  of  his 
clutches ;  but  it  was  not  till  some  years  afterwards  that 
we  find  the  local  tyrant  bound  over  in  sureties  to  leave 
the  two  lawful  proprietors  of  these  funds  alone.  So  far  as 
can  be  made  out,  Mary's  grant  to  Buchanan  was  almost 
identical  in  date  with  the  publication  of  the  Psalms  and 
the  sonnet  which  he  placed  at  their  head  :  a  graceful  and 
royal  return  for  the  compliment,  quite  in  harmony  with 
the  customs  of  the  time.  Both  eve-nts  occurred,  as  would 
appear,  in  the  year  1564,  when  all  was  still  well  with  the 
unfortunate  Queen. 

Buchanan  has  been  accused  of  great  ingratitude  to 
Mary,  because  at  one  time  he  served  and  flattered  her,  and 
received  as  a  recompense  for  the  incense  he  offered,  a  sub- 
stantial benefit :  but  afterwards  turned  from  her  party  to 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.  £87 

that  of  her  brother,  and  condemned  her  with  unsparing 
blarne  in  his  History,  as  well  as  acted  against  her  after  her 
downfall.  But  the  ingratitude  is  quite  incapable  of  proof. 
To  be  devoted  to  a  royal  personage  in  his  or  her  youth, 
and  to  maintain  unbroken,  however  he  or  she  may  change, 
this  early  devotion  through  evil  and  through  good  report, 
is  a  romantic  grace  which  is  given  to  few.  It  was  given 
to  very  few  of  those  who  received  with  enthusiasm  the 
young  Queen  of  Scotland,  when  she  came  unsullied,  with 
all  her  natural  fascination  and  charm,  into  the  country 
which  hoped  everything  from  her,  yet  knew  nothing  of 
her.  After  the  half-dozen  years  of  disaster  and  tragedy,  of 
which  a  much  greater  number  of  her  people  believed  her 
the  guilty  cause  than  the  innocent  victim,  there  were  few 
indeed  who  maintained  their  faith.  And  Buchanan  was 
neither  romantic  nor  young  ;  he  had  none  of  the  elements 
of  an  enthusiast  in  him.  A  caustic  man  of  the  world,  a 
self-absorbed  scholar  without  domestic  ties  or  usage  in  the 
art  of  loving,  it  would  have  been  wonderful  indeed  had  he 
constituted  himself  the  champion  of  his  beautiful  pupil 
in  her  terrible  adversity  because  she  had  shown  him  a 
little  favor  and  he  had  laid  poetical  homages  at  her  feet  in 
a  brighter  time.  It  would  be  hard  indeed  if  such  a  passage 
of  mutual  good  offices  were  to  bind  a  man's  judgment  for- 
ever, and  prevent  him  from  exercising  the  right  of  choos- 
ing whom  he  will  serve  to  all  time.  Mary's  bounty  would 
suffice  to  give  to  her  tutor  the  independence  which  he  had 
struggled  for  all  his  life,  if  it  had  been  paid  ;  but  it  was 
not  paid  for  several  years  ;  and  it  was  a  bounty  which  cost 
the  giver  nothing,  so  that  the  claim  for  eternal  gratitude 
is  overweening  in  any  case. 

At  the  same  time,  both  then  and  ever,  Buchanan's  pa- 
tron and  backer  was  the  Lord  James,  a  man  with  whom 
he  was  very  much  more  likely  to  find  himself  in  sympathy 
than  with  the  young  Queen.  A  grave  temper  and  some 


388  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

learning,  and  also  the  charm  of  early  association,  would 
naturally  attract  the  elderly  scholar  more  than  Mary's 
feminine  gifts,  however  great  their  charm.  It  was  Murray, 
no  doubt,  who  presented  him  to  the  Queen,  and  procured 
him  his  position  at  Court ;  and  just  as  the  tragic  moment 
approached,  when  Mary's  brilliant  life  was  about  to  plunge 
into  darkness,  Murray  bestowed  on  Buchanan  the  place 
of  all  others  best  suited  for  him,  and  to  which  his  whole 
previous  existence  tended — that  of  Principal  of  the  Col- 
lege of  St.  Leonard's  in  the  University  of  St.  Andrews. 
A  more  fit  position,  as  the  best  field  for  his  great  gifts 
and  dignified  retirement  for  his  old  age,  could  not  be  imag- 
ined, Buchanan  was  sixty  ;  he  was  of  all  the  scholars  of 
his  time  facile  princeps,  according  to  the  opinion  of  the 
great  French  printer  and  scholar,  whose  expressions  were 
adopted  in  the  register  of  the  University  as  describing 
the  qualifications  of  the  new  Principal.  It  might  well  have 
been  supposed  that  in  the  reconstitution  and  improvement 
of  that  old  University,  in  the  supervision  of  his  students, 
in  the  periodical  visit  to  Edinburgh  for  Church  matters 
or  educational  duties,  which  has  afforded  the  necessary  re- 
laxation to  many  a  succeeding  principal, the  peaceful  days 
of  the  greatest  scholar  in  Europe  would  now  have  passed 
tranquilly,  until  he  found  his  resting-place,  like  so  many 
others,  under  the  soft  green  mantle  of  the  turf  which, 
broken  only  by  solemn  mounds — the  last  traces  of  in- 
dividuality— encircled  the  great  Cathedral  of  St.  Andrews 
as  it  now  encircles  the  ruins  of  that  once  splendid 
shrine. 

The  events  of  the  time,  however,  permitted  no  such 
dignified  and  calm  conclusion.  One  can  imagine  the 
horror  and  dismay  with  which  the  little  community  at  St. 
Andrews  heard  the  dreadful  news,  carried  far  and  wide  on 
every  breeze,  with  every  kind  of  Avhispered  comment  and 
suggestion — soon  to  be  no  longer  whispered  with  pale  face 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.  339 

and  bated  breath,  but  proclaimed  from  the  housetops — of 
Darnley's  murder.  Buchanan  had  poured  forth  his  cele- 
brations of  Mary's  marriage  and  of  the  birth  of  the  heir 
while  still  a  member  of  her  household.  And  no  doubt  he 
had  become  aware  of  the  dissensions  in  that  royal  house, 
of  Darnley's  ingratitude  and  folly  and  the  Queen's  im- 
patience, before  he  escaped  from  all  the  talk  and  endless 
g<*sip  to  the  quiet  of  his  college.  But  it  would  seem 
equally  clear  that  when  the  action  of  the  somber  tragedy 
quickened  he  was  absent  from  the  scene  arid  knew  of  it 
only  by  the  rumors  and  reports  that  came  across  the 
Firth.  First  Rizzio's  murder,  which  the  distant  spectators 
would  discuss,  no  doubt,  with  a  thrill  not  entirely  of  horror, 
a  stern  sense  that  justice  had  been  done,  a  satisfied  preju- 
dice— and  no  doubt  some  patriotic,  if  still  prejudiced, 
hope  that  now  the  Italian  was  removed  there  would  be 
less  of  foreign  policy,  and  a  more  entire  regard  for  the 
welfare  of  affairs  at  home.  Then  would  come  the  rumors 
of  the  Queen's  vengeance,  lightly  held  at  first,  of  Both- 
well  always  in  the  foreground,  her  chief  supporter  and 
partisan — Bothwell  who,  though  loved  by  nobody,  was  yet 
a  Protestant,  and  therefore  not  altogether  beyond  hope. 
And  then  with  ever-quickening  haste  event  after  event — 
the  murder  of  the  King,  for  whom  no  one  would  have 
mourned  much  had  it  been  attended  by  circumstances  less 
terrible  ;  the  mad  proceedings  of  the  Queen,  whether  con- 
strained or  free,  her  captivity,  outrage,  or  conspiracy, 
whichever  it  was,  her  insane  and  incomprehensible  mar- 
riage, which  no  force  or  persuasion  could  account  for. 
As  the  posts  arrived  at  uncertain  intervals,  delayed  by 
weather,  strong  winds  and  heavy  seas,  by  breaking  down 
of  conveyances,  by  the  very  agitations  and  tumults  in  the 
capital  which  made  them  so  terribly  interesting,  the  eager 
spectators  in  Fife  must  have  congregated  to  await  their 
arrival  with  an  intensity  of  excitement,  of  which,  with  our 


390  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

endless  sources  of  information  and  constant  communica- 
tion, we  can  form  little  idea  now. 

And  there  would  seem  to  be  no  doubt  of  the  strong  im- 
mediate feeling  which  arose  against  the  Queen,  the  instant 
conclusion  of  the  bystanders  as  to  her  guilt.  There  have 
been  no  greater  fluctuations  in  historical  opinion  than 
those  that  have  arisen  around  the  facts  of  Mary's  life. 
Historians  of  the  eighteenth  century  considered  it  as-  a 

O  ^  f 

test  of  a  man's  moral  sanity  whether  he  persisted  in  be- 
lieving in  Mary's  innocence  or  not.  Among  her  contem- 
poraries the  progress  of  time  which  softened  impression, 
and  the  many  pathetic  situations  of  her  later  history,  the 
terrible  misfortunes  under  which  she  fell,  her  endless  mis- 
eries and  troubles,  and  the  brave  spirit  with  which  she 
met  them,  turned  some  hearts  again  towards  her,  an  ever- 
troubled  but  ever-devoted  body  of  partisans.  But  at  the 
moment  when  these  terrible  events  occurred  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  the  horror  and  condemnation  were  almost 
unanimous.  No  reasoning  could  explain  away  those  wild 
and  mad  acts,  no  discussion  of  probability  come  in.  The 
mob  in  Edinburgh  which  raged  against  her  was  checked 
in  its  fierceness  and  subdued  to  pity  at  sight  of  the  wretched 
lady  in  her  despair,  at  that  awful  moment  when  she  ap- 
peared at  the  window  of  the  Provost's  lodging  in  the  High 
Street,  and  made  her  wild  appeal,  in  all  the  force  of  im- 
passioned and  terrible  emotion,  to  the  overawed  and  excited 
crowd.  They  saw  her  in  the  carelessness  of  misery  half- 
dressed,  unadorned,  disenchanted,  and  delivered  from  the 
maddening  delusion  which  had  carried  her  away,  recogniz- 
ing in  its  full  extent  the  horrors  of  the  result — and  their 
hearts  were  rent  with  pity.  But  notwithstanding  that 
pity  and  all  the  innate  chivalry  which  her  sufferings  called 
forth,  Edinburgh  and  Scotland,  the  whole  alarmed  and 
terrified  nation,  believed  at  first  the  evidence  of  their 
senses.  There  seems  nothing  more  distinct  than  this  fact 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.    39! 

throughout  all  the  trouble  and  tumult  of  the  moment.  It 
is  not  to  be  taken  as  an  absolute  proof  of  Mary's  guilt. 
Such  impressions  have  existed  in  other  though  less  con- 
spicuous cases  and  have  been  proved  untrue.  But  that 
it  did  exist  universally  there  can  be  little  doubt. 

The  scene  at  the  window  of  the  Provost's  lodging  where 
the  unfortunate  Queen  was  lodged,  near  the  Nether  Bow 
of  Edinburgh,  when  brought  back  from  D unbar  after  the 
flight  of  Bothwell  by  the  angry  lords  with  the  mob  clamor- 
ing underneath,  and  her  enemies  holding  her  fate  in  their 
hands,  seems  to  me  one  of  the  most  significant  in  her  his- 
tory. No  woman  was  ever  in  circumstances  more  terrible. 
The  situation  is  stronger  if  we  suppose  her  guilt,  and  that 
what  we  see  before  us  is  a  great  spirit  carried  away  by  pas- 
sion— that  something  beyond  reason,  beyond  all  human 
power  to  restrain,  which  sometimes  binds  an  angelic  woYnan 
to  a  villain,  and  sometimes  a  man  of  the  highest  power 
and  wisdom  to  a  lovely  trifler  or  a  fool.  It  seems  to  me 
as  at  o.nce  more  consistent  with  the  facts  and  with  human 
nature  to  realize  the  position  of  the  unhappy  Queen  as 
transported  by  that  overwhelming  sentiment,  and  wrought 
on  the  other  side  to  an  impatience  almost  maddening,  by 
the  injuries,  follies,  treacheries,  and  universal  provocation 
of  her  unworthy  husband,  until  the  force  of  the  bewilder- 
ing current  carried  her  in  a  disastrous  moment  over  a  prec- 
ipice worse  than  any  Niagara,  in  a  headlong  course  of 
mingled  misery,  exasperation,  love,  and  despair.  Before 
she  had  even  accomplished  the  terrible  circle  of  events, 
and  become  Bothwell's  wife,  it  requires  no  strong  effort  of 
the  imagination  to  perceive  that  the  despair  might  well 
have  come  uppermost,  and  that  Mary  fully  recognized,  not 
only  the  horror,  but  the  futility  and  wretched  failure  into 
which  she  had  plunged.  We  do  not  pretend  to  believe 
that  there  was  much  to  cause  remorse  in  the  mind  of  such 
a  woman  in  such  an  age  in  the  death,  however  brought 


392  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

about,  of  the  miserable  Darnley.  Mary  could  have  brushed 
him  from  her  memory  like  a  fly,  had  that  been  all.  But 
the  rage  of  despair  and  failure  was  in  her  soul  when  she 
raved  like  a  caged  lion  from  door  to  window,  imprisoned, 
trapped,  and  betrayed,  expressing  her  incoherent  transport 
of  pain  to  the  mob  which  would  have  had  her  blood,  but 
which,  overcome  by  the  spectacle  of  that  supreme  and 
awful  passion,  became  silent  with  awe  or  hushed  by  a 
spasm  of  pity  and  tears. 

So  it  has  remained,  a  spectacle  to  all  the  earth,  which 
the  fiercest  assailant  and  the  most  rigid  judge  cannot  long 
contemplate  without  yielding  to  a  painful  compassion 
which  rends  the  heart.  Why  should  all  that  faculty  and 
force,  all  that  wonderful  being,  with  every  capacity  for 
happiness  and  making  happy,  for  wise  action  and  benefi- 
cent dealing,  for  boundless  influence  and  power — why  such 
youth,  such  strength,  such  spirit,  equal  to  every  enterprise, 
should  they  have  been  swept  away  by  that  remorseless  fate  ? 
"We  can  still  see  the  trapped  and  ruined  Queen — exasper- 
ated still  further  by  the  consciousness  that  many  of  the 
men  now  holding  her  in  bonds  were  at  least  as  guilty  as 
she,  guilty  of  Darnley's  blood,  guilty  if  not  of  favoring 
yet  of  fearing  Bothwell  and  yielding  their  countenance  to 
his  plans — pacing  that  chamber,  appearing  at  that  window, 
her  loveliness,  her  adornments,  and  all  the  wiles  of  trium- 
phant beauty  forgotten,  throwing  forth  to  the  earth  that 
was  as  brass  and  the  skies  that  were  as  iron,  like  a  wild 
animal  in  its  torment,  her  hoarse  inarticulate  cry.  And, 
whatever  we  may  think  of  her  merits,  that  terrible  spec- 
tacle is  more  than  flesh  and  blood  can  bear.  Pity  takes 
the  place  of  wrath  and  indignation  that  she  alone  should 
suffer  :  why  not  Lethington,  Huntly,  Athole,  and  the  rest, 
all  those  stern  peers  who  counseled  with  her  upon  the 
most  effectual  way  of  having  Darnley  removed,  the  thank- 
less fool  who  disturbed  every  man's  peace — why  were  not 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.  393 

they  tried  along  with  her,  they  who  took  such  high  ground 
is  her  judges  ?  Why  should  she  bear  the  bruut  of  all  ? 
Even  Bothwell  had  escaped,  and  Mary  stood  at  the  bar  of 
the  world  alone. 

But  such  thoughts  would  not  seem  to  have  moved  the 
first  spectators,  to  whom  all  that  damning  sequence  of 
events,  one  precipitated  on  the  heels  of  another,  came 
fresh  as  they  occurred  day  by  day.  As  for  Buchanan,  he 
would  be  less  prone  to  doubt  than  any.  He  knew  some- 
thing of  the  Court  of  France  and  of  the  atmosphere  in 
which  Mary  had  received  her  training.  He  was  acquainted 
with  many  a  royal  scandal,  and  had  much  experience  of  a 
world  in  which  vice  was  the  rule  and  good  behavior  a 
mere  exception,  due  to  a  cold  temperament  or  a  wariness 
uncongenial  to  generous  youth.  Such  an  old  man  of  the 
world  is  slow  to  believe  in  innocence  at  all,  and  it  is  very 
likely  that  to  him  who  knew  her  so  well  it  was  impossible 
to  conceive  of  Mary  as  an  example  of  weak  but  spotless 
virtue.  The  Principal  of  St.  Leonard's  went  over  to 
Edinburgh  a  few  days  after  the  completion  of  that  tragic 
chapter,  when  Mary  had  been  consigned  to  Lochleven, 
and  Murray  had  assumed  the  Regency.  The  city  was  still 
agitated  by  much  discussion  of  the  dreadful  questions 
which  occupied  all  minds  yet  was  slowly  calming  down 
like  an  angry  sea,  with  long  seethings  and  swellings  of  ex- 
citement. The  object  of  Buchanan's  visit  was  not  curi- 
osity or  desire  to  be  in  the  center  of  that  excitement,  but 
a  simpler  matter,  which  has  drawn  many  a  Principal  of 
St.  Andrews  since  to  the  capital  of  Scotland,  an  Assembly 
of  the  Church,  which  opened  "in  the  Nether  Tolbooth  " 
on  the  25th  of  June.  Of  this  Assembly  he,  though  a  lay- 
man, was  appointed  Moderator  "  for  eschewing  of  confu- 
sion in  reasoning" — a  curious  motive,  which  proves  at 
least  that  his  contemporaries  had  great  confidence  in  his 
judgment,  and  also  that  the  passion  of  this  excited  and. 


394:  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

tumultuous  time  ran  so  high  in  the  Church  that  a  stronger 
authority  than  usual  was  wanted  to  keep  it  within  bounds. 
The  sentiment  of  the  Church,  or  at  least  of  the  dominant 
party  in  it,  would  seem  to  have  been  rather  satisfaction 
that  the  Sovereign,  foreign  alike  in  training  and  religion, 
had  been  set  aside  than  any  distress  at  the  cause.  The 
Assembly  congratulates  itself  that  "  this  present  has  of- 
fered some  better  occasion  than  in  times  bygane,  and  has 
begun  to  tread  down  Satan  under  foot,"  which  is  not  a 
very  amiable  deliverance  :  but  kindness  and  charity  were 
not  the  Christian  virtues  most  approved  in  those  days. 

From  this  time  Buchanan  took  up  with  vehemence,  and 
indeed  with  violence,  the  prosecution  of  Mary,  acting  often 
as  her  accuser,  and  always  as  an  active  agent,  secretary, 
or  commissioner,  in  the  conduct  of  the  indictment  against 
her.  He  has  been  subject  on  this  account  to  very  hard 
treatment  especially  from  the  recent  defenders  of  the 
Queen.  Mr.  Hosack,  in  his  able  book  Mary  Queen  of  Scots 
and  her  Accusers,  denounces  him  as  having  offered  verses 
and  adulations  to  the  Queen  at  a  time  when,  according  to 
his  own  after-statements,  everybody  knew  her  to  be  living 
in  shameless  vice  and  corruption.  This,  however,  is  not 
at  all  a  necessary  inference.  It  might,  on  the  contrary, 
very  well  have  lent  bitterness  to  Buchanan's  historical  re- 
cord, written  after  the  dreadful  catastrophe  which  so  many 
accepted  as  a  revelation  of  Mary's  real  character,  that  he 
had  himself  been  one  of  the  deceived,  who  for  years  had  en- 
tertained no  suspicion,  but  accepted  the  fair  seeming  as 
truth.  Such  a  sentiment  is  one  of  the  most  common  in 
human  nature.  The  friend  deceived  becomes  the  bitter- 
est enemy  ;  and  he  who  has  been  seduced  into  undeserved 
approval  is  apt  to  go  farther  than  the  fiercest  adversary 
when  he  learns  that  his  own  utterances  have  helped  to  veil 
the  crime  which  he  had  never  suspected  the  existence  of. 
This  motive  is  enough,  we  think,  to  account  for  the 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.  395 

special  virulence  with  which  Buchanan  certainly  does 
assail  the  Queen,  and  the  passion  which  thrills  through  the 
Detectio,  a  sort  of  fury  and  abhorrence  which  makes  every 
paragraph  tingle.  She  had  done  nothing  to  Buchanan  to 
rouse  any  desire  for  individual  vengeance  ;  and  it  is  more 
rational,  certainly,  to  believe  that  the  horror  of  the  dis- 
covery inspired  with  a  sort  of  rage  the  bosom  of  the 
scholar — rage  Avhich  was  perfectly  genuine  in  its  begin- 
ning, though  it  might,  no  doubt,  be  raised  to  whiter 
heat  by  the  continually  increasing  fervor  of  partisanship. 
The  curious  description  of  him  given  by  Sir  James  Mel- 
ville (the  courtier,  not  the  divine)  that  "  he  was  easily 
abused,  and  so  facile  that  he  was  led  with  any  company 
that  he  haunted  for  the  time,  which  made  him  factious  in 
his  old  days ;  for  he  spoke  and  writ  as  they  that  were 
about  him  for  the  time  informed  him,"  would,  if  accepted, 
give  a  still  easier  solution  to  this  question.  But  it  is  a 
little  difficult  to  accept  such  a  character  of  Buchanan, 
who  does  not  seem  to  have  been  a  man  easily  put  off 
from  his  own  way,  especially  when  taken  in  conjunction 
with  the  Assembly's  minute,  recording  his  election  as 
president  "  for  eschewing  of  confusion  in  reasoning."  It 
is  more  easy  to  believe  the  statement  that  he  was  "ex- 
treme vengeable  against  any  man  that  offended  him,  which 
was  his  greatest  fault." 

The  much  darker  accusation  against  Buchanan,  that  he 
was  a  party  to,  or  indeed  the  most  active  agent  in,  the 
forging  of  certain  letters  reported  to  have  been  sent  by 
Mary  to  Bothwell  before  Darnley's  murder,  and  known  far 
and  wide  as  the  Casket  Letters,  seems  to  rest  upon  noth- 
ing but  conjecture.  He  was  one  of  the  few  members  of 
the  party  who  possessed  the  literary  gift,  the  only  one, 
perhaps,  except  Lethington,  whom  Mr.  Skelton  has  pre- 
sented to  us  as  not  only  a  very  enlightened  statesman,  but 
at  all  times  the  faithful  servant  of  Mary,  bat  who  is  ac- 


396  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

cused  by  earlier  writers  of  much  tergiversation  and  false- 
hood. He  it  was,  according  to  Chalmers,  who  was  the 
forger,  reaching  the  summit  of  wickedness  "in  forging 
his  mistress's  handwriting  for  the  odious  purpose  of  con- 
victing her  of  the  crime  of  aggravated  murder."  Chalmers 
was  as  sturdy  a  champion  of  Mary's  innocence  in  the  eight- 
eenth as  Mr.  Skelton  is  in  the  nineteenth  century,  but 
the  conduct  of  historical  research  has  very  much  altered 
in  the  meantime.  The  changes  have  been  rung  between 
Lethington  and  Buchanan  by  various  critics,  but  the  last 
light  upon  t"he  subject  seems  to  be  that  there  is  none,  and 
that  if  the  letters  were  forged  the  forger  at  least  cannot  be 
identified  by  any  art  known  to  history. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  pursue  the  question,  or  to  bring 
further  arguments  to  prove  that  nothing  else  in  Buchanan's 
writings  indicates  the  possession  of  such  dramatic  and  con- 
structive power  as  would  be  necessary  for  the  production 
of  such  a  letter  as  that  professedly  written  from  Glasgow, 
which  is  by  far  the  most  important  of  the  contents  of  the 
Casket.  A  woman's  distracted  soul,  divided  between  pas- 
sion and  shame,  the  very  exaltation  of  guilty  self-abandon- 
ment and  the  horror  of  conscious  depravity  and  despair,  is 
not  a  thing  which  can  be  imagined  or  embodied  by  the  first 
ready  pen,  or  even  able  intellect.  No  one  of  all  the  tumult- 
uous band  that  directed  affairs  in  Scotland  has  given  us  any 
reason  to  suppose  that  he  was  capable  of  it.  Its  very  con- 
tradictions, those  changes  of  mood  and  feeling  which  the 
most  ignorant  reader  can  perceive,  are  quite  beyond  the 
mark  of  ordinary  invention.  Mr.  Froude  has  said  that  only 
Shakespeare  or  Mary  Stewart  could  have  written  it — at  all 
events  the  writer,  supposing  it  to  be  forged,  must  have 
been  of  unquestionable  imaginative  genius.  It  is  one  of 
the  most  wonderful  compositions  ever  given  to  the  world. 
We  look  on  with  awe  while  those  dark  secrets  of  the  heart 
are  unfolded.  The  revelation  is  too  tremendous,  too  over- 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.          397 

whelming,  and  far  too  true  to  nature,  to  call  forth  mere 
horror  and  condemnation.  It  is  a  proof  of  the  often- 
repeated  statement  that  could  we  but  see  into  the  heart  of 
the  greatest  criminal  pity  would  mingle  with  our  judg- 
ment. Nothing  could  be  more  criminal  and  horrible  than 
the  acts  therein  anticipated,  yet  we  think  it  would  be  im- 
possible for  any  unbiassed  mind  to  read  this  letter  for  the 
first  time  without  an  increase  at  least  of  interest  in  the 
writer,  so  transported  by  her  love,  ready  almost  to  brag  of 
the  falsehood  and  treachery  into  which  it  leads  her,  till 
sick  shame  and  horror  of  herself  breathes  over  her  chang- 
ing mood,  and  she  feels  that  even  he  for  whose  love  all 
is  undertaken  must  loathe  her  as  she  loathes  herself.  To 
imagine  Buchanan,  an  old  man  of  the  world,  somewhat 
coarse,  fond  of  a  rough  jest,  little  used  to  women,  and 
past  the  age  of  passion,  as  producing  that  tragical  and 
terrible  revelation,  is  almost  more  than  impossible,  it  is  an 
insult  to  the  reader's  intelligence.  And  accordingly  the 
latest  writers  on  this  subject  have  relinquished  that  ac- 
cusation ;  they  no  longer  charge  the  old  pedagogue  with 
such  an  effort  of  genius  ;  they  confine  themselves  to  ac- 
cusing him  of  ingratitude  towards  his  benefactress,  which 
is  as  much  as  to  say  that  a  little  personal  favor,  even  when 
well  earned,  is  to  compel  a  man  to  shut  his  eyes  hencefor- 
ward to  the  character  and  conduct  of  the  person  Avho  has 
conferred  it,  and  that  both  patriotic  feeling  and  political 
policy  are  to  be  quenched  by  a  pension,  which  is  a  strange 
view. 

There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  Buchanan  made 
out  the  case  against  the  Queen  with  all  the  rhetorical  force 
of  which  he  was  capable  ;  that  the  accusation  was  bitter,  as 
of  a  man  who  had  been  personally  deceived  and  injured,  as 
indeed  it  is  quite  possible  that  he  may  have  felt  himself  to 
be  ;  and  that  there  was  no  pity,  no  mercy,  nor  compnnc- 
tioii  towards  her,  such  as  arose  in  may  men's  bosoms 


398  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

after  a  little  time,  and  have  been  rife  ever  since  both  in 
writers  and  readers.  The  Detection  is  without  ruth,  and 
assumes  the  most  criminal  and  degrading  motives  through- 
out. Its  intention  clearly  is  to  convince  Scotland,  England, 
and  the  world  of  Mary's  utter  depravity,  and  the  im- 
possibility of  any  excuse  for  her  or  argument  in  her  favor. 
The  strong  and  fiery  indignation  in  it  is  indeed  lessened  in 
effect,  at  least  to  us  in  these  latter  days,  by  the  over  strength 
of  the  indictment ;  and  the  reader  who  turns  from  the 
perusal  of  the  Glasgow  letter — which  damns  indeed  yet 
rouses  a  world  of  conflicting  feelings,  awe  and  terror  and 
pity  for  the  lost  soul  thus  tragically  self-condemned — to  the 
historical  document  in  which  the  charges  against  the  Queen 
are  authoritatively  set  forth,  cannot  fail  to  be  struck  by 
the  difference.  It  is  far  from  being  simple  abhorrence  witli 
which  we  regard  the  revelation  of  the  one,  but  in  the  other 
there  is  no  light  ;the  picture  is  inhuman  and  impossible 
in  its  utter  blackness,  the  guilt  imputed  to  the  Queen  is 
systematic,  unimpassioned,  the  mere  commonplace  of  an 
utterly  depraved  nature.  The  wild  emotion  and  terrible 
impulse  in  her  becomes  mere  vulgar  vice  in  her  accuser's 
hands.  In  this  there  is  nothing  Wonderful,  nothing  out  of 
the  common  course  of  nature,  which  is  prone  to  make 
every  indictment  more  bitter  than  the  facts  that  prove  it. 
But  it  may  well  be  believed  that  it  was  something  of  a 
fierce  consolation  to  the  high-tempered  and  strong-speaking 
Scots,  in  the  rush  of  universal  popular  condemnation,  to 
believe  and  assert  that  the  Queen,  who  had  so  disappointed 
and  disenchanted  all  her  well-wishers,had  been  bad  through 
and  through,  indecent  and  shameless.  The  inclination, 
almost  the  wish,  to  think  the  worst  of  every  fallen  idol  has 
not  died  out  with  the  generation  which  condemned  Mary 
Stewart ;  and  Buchanan  was  the  spokesman,  the  advocate 
of  the  other  party,  whose  conduct  could  only  be  justified 
by  the  establishment  of  her  guilt.  If  she  were  not  guilty, 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.     399 

they  were  traitors.  If  all  the  proof  against  her  was  but 
a  mass  of  distorted  facts  and  false  swearing,  nothing  in  the 
way  of  punishment  was  too  bad  for  her  unfaithful  subjects. 
A  mistake  was  impossible,  the  struggle  was  one  of  life  and 
death.  The  spokesman  in  such  a  tremendous  issue,  the 
narrator  and  setter  forth  of  the  terrible  question,  especially 
if  he  is  a  person  whose  trade  it  is  to  write,  and  who  can  be 
accused  of  doing  his  work  for  hire,  is  always  at  a  disadvan- 
tage. It  can  never  be  proved  to  the  vulgar  mind  that  he 
has  not  formed  his  opinions  to  order,  that  he  does  not  give 
them  out  to  the  world  according  as  they  may  best  benefit 
and  satisfy  his  employers.  His  masters  may  be  hated,  but 
he  is  both  hated  and  despised.  If  it  could  be  proved  that 
Murray  was  solely  actuated  by  ambition  and  the  hope  of 
getting  the  throne  for  hirnself,he  would  still  be  a  belligerent 
with  the  honors  of  war  due  to  him  ;  but  the  scribe,  the 
hireling  who  is  employed  to  state  the  whole  matter  has  no 
position  but  that  of  a  venal  ^  ondant  ready  to  set  forth 
whatever  is  for  his  master's  interests.  Thus  the  historian  of 
a  party,  who  makes  money  by  his  work,  the  literary  ad- 
vocate whose  office  it  is  to  make  the  strongest  statement 
possible  of  his  employer's  case,  is  subject — or  at  least  was 
subject  in  more  primitive  times — to  the  worst  reproaches. 
His  testimony  was  seldom  taken  as  conscientious  or  true. 
Buchanan's  Detection  was  peculiarly  subject  to  this 
reproach.  It  was  written  for  the  purpose  of  proving  the 
case  of  the  lords  by  demolishing  entirely  that  of  the  Queen 
— before  England  and  the  commissioners  of  England  first, 
seated  in  session  to  investigate  the  subject,  and  after  them 
before  the  world  in  general.  The  inquiry  which  was  opened 
at  York  in  October  15G8,  six  months  after  Mary's  escape 
to  England,  was  the  most  like  a  trial  of  anything  in  which 
her  history  was  discussed.  She  was  represented  by  com- 
missioners, while  Murray  and  several  of  his  colleagues  were 
present  in  person,  along  with  Buchanan  and  other  secre- 


ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

taries  or  minor  commissioners.  It  was  at  this  inquiry  that 
the  Casket  Letters  were  first  produced  under,  we  are  bound 
to  say,  if  we  judge  by  the  rules  of  a  period  of  settled  law  and 
order  like  our  own,  very  suspicious  circumstances.  Even 
the  question  of  the  language  in  which  they  were  written  is 
a  very  difficult  one.  All  through,  indeed,  this  question  is 
difficult,  though  it  is  never  formally  discussed  until  that 
tragical  occasion.  In  what  language  did  Mary  and  Knox 
hold  their  discussions  ?  Could  it  be  always  in  French  that 
this  accomplished  Queen  wrote  and  spoke  ?  When  she  is 
reported  to  have  said,  as  recorded  in  a  previous  chapter, 
"  That  man  gart  me  greet  sore,  and  grat  never  tear,"  is 
this  expression,  so  distinctively  and  strongly  Scots,  a  tran- 
slation from  some  more  elegant  murmur  in  another  lang- 
uage ?  She  who  had  so  many  tongues,  had  she  left  out 
that  in  which  shehad  been  born,  the  language  of  her  child- 
hood and  of  her  country  ?  This  problem  is  only  consid- 
ered by  the  historians  when  it  is  required  to  prove  that  a 
letter  must  be  forged  because  it  is  apparently  first  written 
in  Scots.  There  is  also  a  very  great  point  made  of  the 
difference  between  Scots  and  English,  which  seems  to  have 
been  very  slight  indeed,  a  difference  of  spelling  more  than 
anything  else,  nothing  that  could  confuse  ai^  but  the 
most  ignorant  reader.  The  following  sentences  from 
Buchanan's  "  Admonition  direct  to  the  Treio  Lord-is  main- 
tainer  is  of  justice"  will  throw  some  lighten  the  latter 
question,  the  difference  between  the  written  speech  of  the 
two  different  kingdoms,  which  one  writer  tells  us  would 
have  made  it  easier  for  Queen  Elizabeth  to  read  letters  in 
French  than  Scots  : — 

"It  may  seme  to  zour  lordshippis,"  says  Buchanan,  "yatl, 
melling  with  heich  materis  of  governing  of  comoun  welthis  do 
pass  myne  estait,  heing  of  sa  meane  qualitie,  or  forgetting  my 
de\vtie  geveing  counsal  to  ye  wysest  of  yis  realme.  Not  the  les 
seeing  the  miserie  sa  greit  appeiring  and  the  calamitie  sa  neir  ap- 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.  401 

preaching,  I  thocht  it  les  faul  to  incur  the  cryme  of  surmount- 
ing my  private  estait  than  the  blame  of  neglecting  the  publict 
danger." 

From  this  the  reader  will  be  able  to  judge  what  extraor- 
dinary difficulty  there  was  in  the  Scotch  to  an  English 
reader  of  those  days.  The  use  of  z  instead  of  y,  of  y  in- 
stead of  th,  are  matters  very  easily  mastered  ;  and  it  is 
surely  the  utmost  folly  to  suppose  that  Queen  Elizabeth 
could  have  found  the  slightest  difficulty  in  deciphering 
this  northern  version  of  the  common  tongue. 

The  document  quoted  above  is  a  very  powerful  and  no 
doubt  also  violent  assault  upon  the  Hamiltons,  especially 
called  forth  by  the  murder  of  the  Regent  Murray,  the  slack- 
ness of  the  succeeding  Government  in  the  punishment  of 
his  assassin,  and  the  powerful  reasons  there  were  for  des- 
troying— a  measure  which  Buchanan  thought  imperative 
both  for  the  safety  of  the  realm  and  the  child-king — that 
powerful  family,  the  head  of  which  was  next  in  succession 
to  the  Scotch  Crown,  and  had  been  popularly  believed  to 
be  ready  for  any  crime  to  obtain  it.  Now  that  there  was 
nothing  but  the  life  of  a  child  between  the  Hamiltons  and 
this  elevation,  Buchanan  lifted  up  his  testimony  against 
the  supineness  which  left  the  race  undisturbed  to  carry 
out  its  evil  designs.  Murray  had  been  murdered  in  the 
beginning  of  1570,  and  the  Admonition  was  printed  at 
Stirling  a  few  months  later.  In  the  same  year  Buchanan 
wrote  that  curious  tract  called  the  Chameleon,  a  satirical 
attack  upon  Lethington,  which  is  not  very  brilliant  either 
in  language  or  conception,  and  fails  altogether  in  the  in- 
cisive bitterness  which  characterizes  most  of  Buchanan's 
other  political  papers.  "  It  is  at  least  equal  in  vigor  and 
elegance  to  that  of  most  compositions  in  the  ancient  Scot- 
tish language,"  says  Buchanan's  biographer,  but  few 
modern  readers  will  agree  in  this  verdict.  Buchanan's 
hand  had  not  the  lightness  necessary  for  such  a  perform- 
16 


402  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

ance.  The  guilt  of  Mary  and  the  death  of  Murray  fur- 
nished him  with  more  emphatic  motives  than  the  iniquities 
of  Maitland,  and  he  was  evidently  stronger  in  assault  and 
invective  than  in  the  lighter  methods  of  composition. 

It  might  have  been  supposed  that  his  hopes  of  prefer- 
ment would  have  been  seriously  injured  by  Murray's  death. 
But  it  was  after  this  event  that  he  was  selected  for  the 
greatest  office  which  Scotland  could  bestow  upon  a  scholar 
— the  education  of  the  young  King.  Buchanan's  services 
were  no  doubt  well  worthy  of  such  a  reward  :  at  the  same 
time  it  may  be  allowed  that  a  scholar  so  renowned,  the  first 
of  contemporary  poets  according  to  the  judgment  of  his 
class,  and  the  greatest  of  lettered  Scotsmen  beyond  all 
question,  could  not  be  passed  over.  During  the  interven- 
ing time  he  had  retained  the  appointment  of  Principal  of 
St.  Leonard's  College,  his  frequent  absences  being  made 
possible  by  the  fact  that  though  he  had  much  to  do  with 
the  government  and  regulation  of  the  University  of  St. 
Andrews,  he  was  not  actively  employed  in  giving  instruc- 
tion. But  after  this  we  float  at  once  into  a  halcyon  time. 
It  was  in  the  end  of  15G9  or  beginning  of  1570  that  he  was 
appointed  the  governor  of  the  King,  and  in  this  capacity 
and  amid  peaceful  surroundings  more  appropriate  to  his 
character  then  the  rage  of  politics,  the  old  scholar  becomes 
more  distinctly  visible  than  it  was  possible  he  could  be  in 
the  midst  of  contention  and  under  the  shadow  of  greater 
men.  He  was  about  sixty-four  at  the  time  he  entered 
upon  the  active  duties  of  the  office.  "A  man  of  notable 
endowments  for  his  knowledge  of  Latin  poesie — much 
honored  in  other  countries,  pleasant  in  conversation,  re- 
hearsing on  all  occasions  moralities  short  and  instructive, 
whereof  he  had  abundance,  inventing  when  he  wanted," 
says  Sir  James  Melville.  Sand-ford  and  Merton  had  not 
been  written  for  the  advantage  of  schoolboys  in  Melville's 
days,  yet  the  picture  is  that  of  an  antiquated  Mr.  Barlow 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION. 


403 


never  forgetting  the  art  of  in- 
struction. The  particular  anec- 
dotes, however,  told  of  Buchan- 
an, do  not  recall  Mr.  Barlow  or 
his  "moralities"  at  all. 

The  little  King  James,  a 
precocious  and  clever  child  like 
all  the  infantile  monarchs  of 
the  house  of  Stewart,  had  heen 
established  at  Stirling,  always 
a  favorite  residence  of  the  Scotch 
Kings,  where  he  held  his  baby  Court  in  peace 


while 


401  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

his  mother  pined  in  England,  and  the  Scotch  lords 
struggled  for  the  mastery,  and  succeeded  each  other 
as  Kegents  at  home.  The  troubles  of  the  world  out- 
side seem  to  have  been  kept  far  from  the  surroundings 
of  the  boy,  to  whom  both  the  kingdoms  looked  as  their 
heir,  the  child  in  whom  the  glories  of  his  race  came  to  a 
climax,  and  the  union  of  the  warring  kingdoms  was  at 
last  secured.  Personally,  he  was  by  far  the  least  distin- 
guished of  his  name,  but  no  one  as  yet  suspected  this  fact 
or  thought  of  Buchanan's  pupil  as  less  hopeful  than  any 
of  the  gallant  Jameses  who  had  preceded  him.  The  little 
Court  at  Stirling  was  presided  over  at  this  early  period  by 
the  Lady  Mar,  a  dignified  matron  who  was  "  wise  and 
sharp  and  kept  the  king  in  great  awe,"  although  at  the 
same  time  very  tender  of  the  child  and  respectful  of  his 
royal  dignity.  Almost  all  James's  immediate  surroundings 
seem  to  have  belonged  to  this  powerful  race.  The  master 
of  the  household  was  a  certain  Laird  of  Drumwhasel,  to 
whom  no  other  name  is  given,  and  who  is  described  as 
ambitious  and  greedy,  a  man  whose  "greatest  care  was  to 
advance  himself  and  his  friends."  Alexander  Erskine, 
another  member  of  the  household,  calls  forth  something 
like  enthusiasm  in  the  courtly  narrative  as  "  a  gallant, 
well-nurtured  gentleman,  loved  and  honored  by  all  men 
for  his  good  qualities  and  great  discretion,  no  ways  fac- 
tious nor  envious,  a  lover  of  all  honest  men,  desiring  to 
see  men  of  good  conversation  about  the  prince  rather  than 
his  own  nearest  friends  if  he  found  them  not  so  meet." 
In  addition  to  this  official  household  were  the  tutors 
charged  with  James's  education,  two  of  them  being  mem- 
bers of  the  Erskine  family,  abbots  of  Cambuskenneth  and 
Dryburgh,  though  those  titles  were  no  doubt  merely  ficti- 
tious, meaning  only  that  the  "  temporalities,"  the  endow- 
ments of  the  extinct  monasteries,  were  in  their  hands. 
The  other  and  principal  masters  of  James  were  Sir  Peter 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.    405 

Young  and  Mr.  George  Buchanan.  Young  was  "  gentle, 
loth  to  offend  the  king  at  any  time,  carrying  himself 
warily  as  a  man  who  had  a  mind  to  his  own  weal  by  keep- 
ing of  his  majesty's  favor  " — "but  Mr.  George,"  adds 
the  historian,  "  was  a  Stoick  philosopher  who  looked  not 
far  before  him."  He  "  held  the  king  in  great  awe,"  so 
that  James  "  even  trembled  "as  he  himself  says  elsewhere, 
"at  his  approach,"  and  did  not  spare  either  rod  or  word 
in  the  interests  of  his  pupil.  Some  of  the  anecdotes  of 
this  severe  impartiality  are  amusing  enough.  At  one  time 
annoyed  by  the  noise  which  the  King  and  his  playfellows 
were  making,  Buchanan  bade  them  be  silent  under  certain 
penalties  if  the  offense  were  repeated,  and  provoked  by  a 
childish  impertinence  from  James,  took  up  the  little  cul- 
prit and  whipped  him  with  exemplary  impartiality,  not- 
withstanding that  his  companion,  the  little  Master  of  Mar, 
stood  by,  on  whom  vicarious  chastisement  might  have  been 
applied.  Lady  Mar,  rushing  to  the  scene  of  action  at  the 
sound  of  "the  wailing  which  ensued,"  took  the  child  from 
his  master's  hands  and  consoled  him  in  her  motherly  arms, 
asking  Buchanan  indignantly  how  he  dared  to  touch  the 
Lord's  anointed.  The  incident  is  very  natural  and  amus- 
ing in  its  homely  simplicity  ;  the  child  crying,  the  lady 
soothing  him,  the  sardonic  old  master  in  his  furred  night- 
gown and  velvet  cap,  looking  on  unmoved,  bidding  her 
kiss  the  place  to  make  it  well.  The  Master  of  Mar  no 
doubt  would  cry  too  for  sympathy,  and  the  old  gentleman 
take  up  his  big  book  and  move  off  to  seek  a  quieter  place 
for  study.  On  another  occasion,  when  the  little  King 
tried  to  get  a  sparrow  from  his  companion  and  crushed 
the  bird  in  the  struggle,  Buchanan  rated  him  as  himself 
a  bird  out  of  a  bloody  nest.  He  was  an  old  man  and  alone 
in  the  world  indifferent  to  future  favors  from  a  king 
whose  reign  he  would  probably  not  live  to  see,  and  treat- 
ing him  with  impartial  justice. 


406  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

There  was,  however,  no  indifference  to  James's  educa- 
tion in  this  austere  simplicity  :  indeed  it  would  seem  that 
Buchanan,  like  other  preceptors  of  monarchs,  had  some 
hope  of  forming  an  ideal  prince  out  of  the  boy.  A  few 
years  after  his  appointment  to  his  office,  and  when  James 
was  still  too  young  to  profit  by  it,  he  began  to  write  his 
famous  treatise,  in  the  form  of  a  dialogue,  upon  the  laws 
of  the  kingdom,  the  duty  respectively  of  kings  and  sub- 
jects. The  De  Juri  Regni,  published  when  the  King  was 
about  twelve,  was  dedicated  to  him  in  a  grave  and  digni- 
fied letter  in  which  Buchanan  describes  his  work  as  an  at- 
tempt to  expound  the  prerogatives  of  the  Scottish  Crown, 
"  in  which,"  he  says,  "  I  endeavored  to  explain  from 
their  very  cradle,  so  to  speak,  the  reciprocal  rights  and 
privileges  of  kings  and  their  subjects."  He  goes  on  to  say 
that  the  book  was  written  in  the  midst  of  the  public 
troubles  with  a  view  to  enlightening  the  disturbers  of  the 
commonwealth  as  to  their  duties  :  but  that  peace  begin- 
ning to  be  established  he  had  sacrificed  his  argument  for 
the  sake  of  public  tranquillity.  Now  however,  that  it  may 
be  useful  to  the  development  of  the  King  he  brings  it 
forth  again.  The  direct  address  to  James  is  full  of  that 
curious  self-deception  or  defective  insight  which  is  so  com- 
mon among  those  who  have  the  training  of  a  pupil  of 
great  importance  in  the  world.  The  boy  had  grown  be- 
yond the  age  of  personal  chastisement ;  he  had  reached 
that  in  which  the  precocious  facility  of  comprehension, 
which  is  so  strongly  fostered  by  the  circumstances  of  such 
a  position  as  his,  looks  to  the  dazzled  pedagogues  and  at- 
tendants like  genius,  and  there  seems  no  prognostic  too 
happy  or  too  brilliant  for  the  new  career  in  which  at  last 
there  is  about  to  be  fulfilled  all  that  men  have  dreamed  of 
a  king. 

"  Many  circumstances  tend  to  convince  me  that  my  present 
exertions  will  not  prove  fruitless,  especially  your  age,  yet  un- 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.  407 

corrupted  by  perverse  opinions  ;  a  disposition  beyond  your  years, 
spontaneously  urging  you  to  every  noble  pursuit ;  a  facility  in 
obeying  not  only  your  preceptors,  but  all  prudent  monitors ;  a 
judgment  and  dexterity  in  disquisition  which  prevent  you  from 
paying  much  regard  to  authority,  unless  it  be  confirmed  by  solid 
argument.  I  likewise  perceive  that  by  a  kind  of  natural  instinct, 
you  so  dislike  flattery,  the  nurse  of  tyranny,  and  the  most  griev- 
ous pest  of  a  legitimate  monarchy,  that  you  as  heartily  hate  the 
courtly  solecisms  and  barbarisms  as  they  are  relished  and  affected 
by  those  who  consider  themselves  as  the  arbiters  of  every  ele- 
gance, and  who,  by  way  of  seasoning  their  conversation,  are  per- 
petually sprinkling  it  with  majesties,  lordships,  excellencies,  and, 
if  possible,  with  other  expressions  still  more  nauseous.  Although 
the  bounty  of  nature  and  the  instruction  of  your  governors  may 
at  present  secure  you  against  this  error,  yet  am  I  compelled  to 
entertain  some  slight  degree  of  suspicion  lest  evil  communica- 
tion, the  alluring  nurse  of  the  vices,  should  lend  an  unhappy 
impulse  to  your  still  tender  mind,  especially  as  I  am  not  ignorant 
with  what  facility  the  external  senses  3Tieldto  seduction.  I  have 
therefore  sent  you  this  treatise,  not  only  as  a  monitor,  but  even 
as  an  importunate  and  sometimes  impudent  dun,  who  in  this 
turn  of  life  may  convoy  you  beyond  the  i-ocks  of  adulation  ;  and 
may  not  merely  offer  you  advice,  but  confine  you  to  the  path 
which  you  have  entered,  and  if  you  should  chance  to  deviate 
may  reprehend  you  and  recall  your  steps.  If  you  obey  this 
monitor  you  will  insure  tranquillity  to  yourself  and  your  family, 
and  will  transmit  your  glory  to  the  most  distant  posterity." 

That  James  VI  should  be  described  as  disliking  flattery 
and  despising  authority,  if  not  enforced  by  solid  argu- 
ment, is  strange  to  hear  ;  and  that  he  should  be  so  boldly 
called  upon  to  consider  a  plea  for  national  freedom  and  a 
constitutional  rule,  as  the  chief  guarantee  of  tranquillity 
and  honor,  is  still  more  remarkable.  Certainly  it  was 
not  from  Buchanan  that  he  got  those  high  pretensions  of 
divine  right,  which  had  never  flourished  in  Scotland ; 
although  by  a  not  uncommon  paradox  the  most  faithful 
partisans  of  the  family  which  was  brought  to  ruin  by 
these  pretensions  were  found  in  the  northern  kingdom. 


408  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

Very  different  were  the  doctrines  upon  which  Buchanan 
nourished  the  royal  child.  James  acknowledged  after- 
wards not  ungracefully  the  distinction  of  his  instructor 
in  letters.  "  All  the  world,"  he  says,  "  knows  that  my 
master  George  Buchanan  was  a  great  master  in  that 
faculty."  But  his  opinions  in  politics  found  no  favor  in 
his  pupil's  eyes  when  James  emerged  from  his  youthful 
subjection  and  began  to  show  his  native  mettle.  At 
twelve,  individuality  in  that  respect  would  scarcely  be 
developed,  and  a  reverence  for  his  tutor's  sharp  tongue 
and  ready  hand  would  keep  the  King  from  premature  op- 
position. 

While  this  work  was  going  on  in  the  comparative  quiet 
of  Stirling,  Scotland  was  lost  in  the  turmoil  of  one  of  the 
most  wild  and  terrible  portions  of  her  history.  It  is  indeed 
rather  from  the  glimpse  we  have  of  the  little  royal  house- 
hold in  the  foreground  of  all  that  strife  and  bloodshed,  the 
Lady  Mar  in  her  matronly  dignity,  Buchanan  in  his  furred 
gown  among  his  books,  and  the  clamor  and  laughter  of 
the  two  boys  interrupting  the  quiet,  that  we  can  believe 
in  any  semblance  of  peace  or  domestic  life  at  all  in  the 
distracted  country.  The  Regent  Lennox,  the  King's 
grandfather,  was  killed  under  the  very  rocks  of  the  castle 
where  James  learned  his  lessons.  His  young  companion's 
father,  the  Earl  of  Mar,  was  taken  from  the  family  at 
Stirling  and  raised  to  a  brief  and  agitated  Regency, 
through  all  of  which  a  civil  war  was  raging.  And  till 
from  beyond  the  seas  there  came  the  still  more  horrible 
news  of  that  French  massacre  which  convulsed  the  world, 
and  made  an  end  of  Mary's  party,  nothing  was  secure 
from  one  day  to  another  in  Scotland.  It  was  in  the  midst 
of  that  very  tumult  and  endless  miserable  conflict,  in 
which  Mary's  followers  had  at  last  set  up  the  doctrine  of 
her  irresponsibility  and  divine  right  to  retain  her  position 
as  Queen  whatever  might  be  her  guilt  as  Mary  Stewart— 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.          409 

that  the  scholar  set  himself  to  compose  his  work  upon  the 
rights  of  the  kingdom  and  the  duties  of  kings.  His  high 
temper,  his  strong  partisanship,  his  stern  logic,  would 
find  an  incitement  and  inspiration  in  those  specious  argu- 
ments on  the  other  side  which  were  so  new  to  Scotland, 
and  had  been  contradicted  over  and  over  again  in  her 
troublous  history,  where  no  one  was  so  certain  to  be 
brought  to  book  for  his  offenses  as  the  erring  or  unsuc- 
cessful monarch.  It  must  be  difficult  for  a  great  classicist 
to  be  at  j:he  same  time  a  believer  in  the  divine  right  of 
kings ;  and  it  was  a  new  idea  for  the  medieval  Scot  ac- 
customed to  reverence  the  name,  but  to  criticise  in  the 
sharpest  practical  way  the  acts  of  his  sovereign.  And  we 
may  imagine  that  the  old  scholar,  who  could  not  but 
hear  from  his  window  the  shouts  of  the  warfare  between 
the  Queen's  party  and  the  King's,  would  have  a  grim 
satisfaction  as  he  sat  high  above  them,  protected  more  or 
less  by  the  royal  name,  in  forging  at  his  leisure  those  links 
of  remorseless  argument  which,  though  they  had?  no  effect 
upon  the  pupil  to  whom  they  were  dedicated,  had  their 
share  in  regulating  that  great  rebellion  which  had  so  im- 
portant an  effect  upon  the  after-history  of  the  two  king- 
doms. 

During  this  period,  however,  Buchanan  had  other  oc- 
cupations besides  his  tutorship  and  his  literary  work.  He 
was  made  "  director  of  the  Chancery, "whatever  that  may 
mean,  and  in  1570  was  elevated  to  the  post  of  Keeper  of 
the  Privy  Seal,  in  which  capacity  he  served  in  various 
Parliaments  :  and  was  also  a  member  of  the  Privy  Council. 
When  the  conspiracy  arose  against  the  Regent  Morton 
which  ended  in  his  temporary  deprivation  of  the  regency, 
Buchanan  seems  to  have  taken  part  against  him,  though 
on  what  argument  we  are  not  told  :  for  it  was  Morton's 
power  which  had  brought  about  the  reestablishment  of 
peace  and  order  to  which  he  refers  in  the  dedication  of  his 


410  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

book.  And  it  is  a  feasible  conjecture  that  it  was  by  his 
crafty  suggestion  that  the  Regent's  fictitious  plaints  of 
being  weary  of  his  high  office  and  desiring  nothing  more 
than  that  the  King's  Majesty  should  take  the  government 
into  his  own  hand,  were  ingeniously  twisted  so  as  to  give 
his  dismissal  the  air  of  a  gracious  consent  to  Morton's  own 
wishes.  An  old  man  like  Buchanan,  well  acquainted  with 
the  wiles  of  logic  and  the  pretexts  of  state,  was  more  likely 
to  use  an  advantage  in  which  there  is  a  certain  grim 
humor,  and  to  take  the  adversary  in  his  own  toils,  than 
such  an  inexperienced  politician  as  young  Mar,  or  any  of 
the  undistinguished  nobles  who  carried  out  that  stratagem. 
Whether  Buchanan  supported  his  old  pupil,  Mar,  in  his 
attempt  to  seize  the  governorship  of  the  castle  and  the 
King's  person  out  of  the  hands  of  his  uncle,  or  in  what 
aspect  he  was  regarded  when  Morton  returned  to  the  head 
of  affairs,  we  have  no  means  of  knowing.  Whatever  his 
influence  might  be  at  the  King's  ear  or  amid  the  secret 
meetings»of  the  malcontents,  neither  as  Lord  Privy  Seal  nor 
as  King  James's  tutor  did  he  come  in  public  collision  with 
any  public  authority.  His  action,  whenever  he  appears 
publicly,  is  perfectly  characteristic  of  his  real  position  and 
faculties.  He  took  part  in  a  commission  for  the  establish- 
ment of  a  system  of  municipal  law  :  he  was  one  of  the 
Church's  commissioners  on  two  occasions  in  determining 
her  policy  and  discipline.  When  the  reform  of  the  Univer- 
sities of  Scotland,  so  often  taken  up  since  then,  and  so  slow 
to  be  accomplished,  was  brought  under  the  consideration  of 
Parliament,  Buchanan  was  one  of  the  chief  of  the  commis- 
sioners appointed  to  consider  it.  He  is  reported  to  have  been 
the  author  of  a  scheme  of  reconstruction  to  be  employed  in 
the  University  of  St.  Andrews  ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  find 
in  this  new  system  that  special  attention  was  enjoined  to  be 
given  to  Greek,  and  that  the  study  of  Hebrew  was  also  rec- 
ommended to  the  students.  The  latter  language,  we  be- 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.     41 1 

lieve,  still  remains  an  established  part  of  the  studies  of 
young  men  in  preparation  for  the  ministry  in  the  Church  of 
Scotland.  Buchanan  desired  that  the  Principal  of  his  own 
College,  St.  Leonards,  should  lecture  on  Plato.  And  he 
made  a  present  of  a  number  of  Greek  books,  still  carefully 
preserved,  to  Glasgow  University,  though  why  he  should 
have  chosen  to  send  them  there,  instead  of  to  his  own 
smaller  and  poorer  University,  we  have  nothing  to  show. 
It  is  thus  apparent  that  in  his  active  public  work  Bu- 
chanan's chief  attention  was  given  to  his  own  proper  sub- 
jects. There  is  no  evidence  that  he  did  more  than  was  in- 
dispensable to  his  official  character  in  matters  more  ex- 
clusively political. 

His  old  age  thus  passed  in  a  certain  learned  leisure 
which  it  is  very  difficult  to  imagine  as  existing  in  so  tu- 
multuous a  period  and  amid  so  many  violent  changes 
and  vicissitudes.  He  had  many  learned  correspondents 
throughout  the  world,  almost  all  the  great  scholars  of  the 
time  being  numbered  among  his  friends  ;  and  the  letters 
which  he  received  from  all  quarters  implied  a  considerable 
amount  of  letter-writing  on  his  side.  He  sent  copies  of 
his  books  to  his  friends  as  if  he  had  been  the  most  modern 
of  novelists,  and  it  is  curious  to  think  of  the  big  laborious 
volume  of  solemn  Latin  dramas,  or  that  thin  but  weighty 
tome,  instinct  with  another  and  more  living  kind  of  in- 
terest, which  set  forth  the  rights  of  nations — sent  by 
some  trusty  messenger,  a  young  scholar  finding  in  the 
packet  entrusted  to  his  charge  the  best  introduction  to  one 
of  the  lights  of  learning  on  the  Continent,  or  some  ad- 
venturer making  his  way  to  a  commission  in  the  Scottish 
Archers  or  other  service  of  arms  more  profitable  for  a 
younger  son  than  the  frays  and  feuds  of  Scotland.  The 
learned  doctors  of  the  Sorbonne,  the  scholars  of  Gen- 
eva, and  the  printers  of  Holland,  replied  on  their  side 
not  only  with  elaborate  thanks  and  eulogies,  but  with  re- 


412  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

sponsive  presents,  treatises  or  translations  of  their  own, 
some  of  them  dedicated  to  the  royal  boy  who  was  the 
pupil  of  their  friend,  and  of  whom  he  gave  so  wonderful  a 
description.  "  I  have  been  guilty  of  trifling  with  a  sacred 
subject,"  wrote  Berger  with  his  volume  of  poems,  "  and  I 
have  dedicated  my  trifles  to  a  king."  Another  learned 
correspondent  sends  a  Plato  which  he  has  edited,  one 
volume  of  which  he  had  also  inscribed  to  James,  begging 
that  his  friend  would  present  it  to  his  Majesty.  They 
would  seem  to  have  shared  Buchanan's  satisfaction  in  his 
princely  pupil,  and  it  is  chiefly  by  way  of  reflection, 
through  these  responses,  that  we  perceive  what  his  opinion 
of  the  young  King  was,  and  how  much  proud  delight,  ex- 
pressed no  doubt  in  the  most  classical  language,  he  took 
in  the  boy's  aptitude  and  promise.  The  following  letter, 
however,  which  is  not  classical  at  all,  but  written  in 
choice  Scots  and  addressed  to  Queen  Elizabeth's  envoy, 
Sir  Thomas  Randolph,  gives  a  less  dignified  but  very 
graphic  description  of  his  own  circumstances  and  occupa- 
tions. It  is  written  from  Stirling  during  Morton's  Re- 
gency, when  peace  prevailed  and  even  prosperity  had  re- 
turned in  some  measure  to  the  distracted  kingdom. 

"  To  Maister  Randolph,  Squiar,  Maister  of  Postes  to  the  Queen's 
Grace  of  England. 

"  Maister,  I  haif  rescevit  diverse  letters  frome  you,  and  yit  I 
haif  answerit  to  nane  of  them — of  the  quhilk  albeit  I  haif  mony 
excuses  such  as  age,  forgetfulness,  business,  and  disease,  yet  I 
will  use  nane  as  now,  except  my  sweirness  (reluctance)  and  your 
gentleness  :  and  gif  ye  think  nane  of  them  sufficient,  content 
you  with  ane  confession  of  the  fait  without  fear  of  punition  to 
follow  on  my  onkindness.  As  for  the  present  I  am  occupied  in 
writyng  of  our  historie,  being  assured  to  content  few,  and  to 
displease  many  therethrow.  As  to  the  end  of  it  if  ye  gett  it  not 
or  (before)  this  winter  bepassit  lippen  (trust)  not  for  it,  no  nane 
other  writyngs  from  me.  The  rest  of  my  occupation  is  witli  the 
gout  quhilk  halds  me  busy  both  day  and  night.  And  quhair  ye  say 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.          413 

ye  have  not  lang  to  lyif  I  trust  to  God  to  go  before  you,  albeit  I 
be  on  foot,  and  ye  ryd  the  post :  praying  you  also  not  to  disppst 
my  hoste  at  Newark,  Jone  of  Kelsterne.  This  I  pray  you  partly 
for  his  awyn  sake  quhame  I  tho't  ane  gude  fellow,  and  partly  at 
request  of  such  as  I  dare  not  refuse.  And  thus  I  take  my  lief 
shortly  at  you  now,  and  my  lang  lief  when  God  pleases,  com- 
mitting you  to  the  protection  of  the  Almighty.  At  Stirling,  xxv. 
day  of  August,  1577. — Yours  to  command  with  service, 

G.  BUCHANAN." 

The  mild,  aged  jest  about  preceding  his  friend  out  of 
life  though  he  must  go  on  foot  and  Randolph  had  the 
advantage  of  commanding  the  Post,  and  his  recommenda- 
tion of  the  erring  postmaster  at  Newark,  who  was  a  good 
fellow,  threw  a  pleasant  light  of  kindly  humor  into  this 
letter.  And  we  thus  hear  for  the  first  time  of  the  History, 
the  greatest  work  of  his  life,  which  he  seems  to  have 
begun  in  the  tranquillity  of  the  palace-castle,  notwith- 
standing the  hostile  influence  of  gout  and  years — hostile 
above  all  to  so  great  a  piece  of  work.  He  was  now  over 
seventy,  and  the  end  of  his  career  seemed  near  at  hand, 
although  he  had  but  recently  taken  in  hand  so  great  an  en- 
terprise. Buchanan's  History  is  not,  more  than  other 
great  histories  which  have  succeeded  it,  an  absolutely  im- 
partial work  ;  but  it  is,  throughout  all  his  own  stirring 
and  momentous  age,  the  record  of  a  bystander  with  abun- 
dant means  of  knowledge  an^l  a  keen  apprehension  of  all 
the  controversies  and  struggles  of  his  time.  If  he  may 
perhaps  glorify  too  much  the  character  of  his  patron  and 
friend  the  Eegent  Murray,  and  take  the  darkest  view  of 
Mary,  we  can  only  say  that  he  would  have  been  more 
angel  than  man  had  he  kept  himself  absolutely  without 
bias  in  that  hot  and  still  unexhausted  debate.  And  there 
was  nothing  angelical  about  the  old  scholar  who  had  taken 
a  part  in  so  many  historical  events,  from  the  siege  of 
Wark  Castle,  where  he  was  present  as  a  boy,  to  the  Con- 
ferences at  York  and  Westminster,  which  were  matters  of 


414  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

yesterday.  The  science  of  history  has  so  much  developed 
since  his  time  that  it  may  almost  be  said  to  have  made  a 
new  beginning  ;  and  much  that  was  considered  authorita- 
tive and  convincing  then  has  fallen  into  the  limbo  of  un- 
certainty, when  not  rejected  altogether.  The  many  differ- 
ing motives  and  agencies  which  can  only  be  fully  estimated 
when  the  period  of  discussion  is  past,  have  come  to  occupy 
a  far  greater  space  in  the  mind  of  the  historian  than 
had  been  dreamed  of  in  Buchanan's  days  ;  and  the  careful 
examination  of  evidence  with  which  we  are  now  familiar 
was  unknown  either  in  the  study  of  the  writer  or  the 
courts  of  law  during  a  time  which  has  left  endless  ques- 
tions from  both  to  be  debated  and  re-debated  by  succeed- 
ing generations.  But  yet  Buchanan's  History  remains  the 
most  important  and  dignified  record  of  the  national  exis- 
tence up  to  his  time ;  and  no  one  would  now  venture  to 
treat  the  story  of  ancient  Scotland,  the  chronicles  of  her 
kings,  or  even  the  still  undecided  questions  of  Mary 
Stewart's  life  and  reign,  without  the  guidance  more  or 
less  of  this  great  authority.  It  was  a  bold  step  to  dedicate 
to  King  James  a  record  in  which  his  mother's  life  was 
denounced  and  condemned  with  such  unsparing  freedom  ; 
but  the  astonishing  absence  of  sympathy  or  human  under- 
standing shown  in  this  was  shared  by  the  greater  part  of 
Buchanan's  contemporaries,  who  evidently  felt  the  facts 
of  the  mother's  guilt  to  be  too  abundantly  demonstrated 
and  universally  consented  to,  to  demand  any  delicacy  of 
statement  as  addressed  to  her  son.  lSTo  one,  we  think,  can 
entertain  any  doubt  of  the  historian's  own  strong  convic- 
tion on  this  subject.  Among  the  nmny  fables  current 
about  Buchanan,  there  was  one  circumstantial  and  oft- 
repeated,  of  his  repentance  on  his  deathbed  of  his  judg- 
ment of  the  Queen  ;  but  this  is  entirely  set  at  rest  by  the 
affecting  record  which  we  shall  quote  farther  on  of  a  last 
visit  paid  to  him  by  certain  of  his  friends  Avho  had  taken 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.     415 

fright  at  the  boldness  of  his  statements,  and  feared  that 
the  King,  now  grown  up  and  developing  his  own  indivi- 
dual sentiments,  might  stop  the  issue  of  the  book  when 
he  saw  these  uncompromising  records. 

We  must  add  one  pretty  story  of  Buchanan's  kindness 
to  his  brethren  in  scholarship  and  literature  which  shows 
the  sharp  and  cautious  scholar  in  a  very  pleasant  light. 
A  certain  Thomas  Jack,  a  schoolmaster  in  Glasgow,  had 
composed  in  Latin  verse  a  little  book  upon  the  ancient 
poets,  called  the  Onomasticon  Poeticum,  and  encouraged 
by  the  friendship  already,  as  he  says,  shown  to  him.  by 
Buchanan,  carried  the  book  to  him  for  revision. 

"  I  found  him  in  the  royal  palace  of  Stirling,  diligently  engaged 
in  writing  his  History  of  Scotland.  He  was  so  far  from  being 
displeased  by  the  interruption  that  he  cheerfully  took  my  work 
from  my  hands,  and  after  reading  two  or  three  pages  of  it,  col- 
lected together  his  own  papers  which  were  scattered  on  the 
table,  and  said,  '  I  will  desist  from  my  work  till  I  have  done 
what  you  wish.'  This  promise  he  accurately  fulfilled ;  and 
within  a  few  days  gave  me  a  paper  written  with  his  own  hand, 
and  containing  such  corrections  as  he  thought  necessary. 

One  can  imagine  the  old  scholar  seated  with  his  docu- 
ments before  him  in  the  light  of  a  broad  window,  perhaps 
arrived  at  some  knotty  point  which  wanted  consideration, 
and  turning  from  the  crabbed  papers,  which  would  not  fit 
themselves  in,  with  that  delight  in  a  lawful  interruption 
and  temptation  to  idleness  which  only  hard-working 
students  know.  Much  has  been  said  about  the  misery  of 
such  interruptions  to  the  absorbed  writer,  but  no  one 
has  pointed  out  the  occasional  relief  and  comfort  which 
they  bring.  Buchanan  must  have  hailed  this  occasion  of 
evading  for  a  moment  his  legitimate  work  with  all  the 
pleasure  of  an  old  critic  and  connoisseur  suddenly  appealed 
to  with  such  a  congenial  demand.  Even  in  our  ashes  live 
their  wonted  fires,  and  where  is  the  scholar  who  does  not 


416  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

turn  with  delight  from  his  history  or  his  sermon  to  criti- 
cize a  copy  of  verses,  to  savourer  a  fine  latinism  or  dig  his 
pen  through  a  false  quantity  as  if  he  were  cutting  down 
an  enemy  ?  Thomas  Jack  has  departed  into  oblivion  along 
with  his  Onomasticon :  but  this  record  of  the  friendly  re- 
ception he  and  his  book  met  with  affords  a  delightful 
gleam  of  light  upon  the  historian's  waning  days. 

It  is  more  remarkable  when  we  find  another  witness 
describing  our  somewhat  irascible  and  sharp  philosopher 
as  growing  young  again  in  the  boys  who  surrounded  him, 
and  adapting  his  mind  to  all  ages  and  classes  of  men.  Prob- 
ably by  the  time  he  came  to  be  the  King's  preceptor 
Buchanan  had  ceased  to  be  so  compliant,  or  very  probably 
conceived  it  appropriate,  on  principle,  to  be  less  indulgent 
to  a  pupil  whose  danger  it  would  be  to  have  too  many 
flatteries  and  caresses. 

We  have  no  very  clear  record  when  it  was  that  the  tute- 
lage of  James  was  supposed  to  be  over,  or  if  Buchanan 
was  ever  formally  freed  from  his  office.  Informally  the 
King  would  have  seemed  to  be  more  or  less  his  own  master 
at  the  end  of  Morton's  Regency,  when,  though  subject  to 
"  raids  "  like  that  of  Gowrie  and  the  contending  influence 
of  one  party  after  another,  there  was  no  longer  any  Eegent 
thought  of,  and  the  business  of  the  country  was  conducted 
formally  in  the  King's  name.  It  would  seem,  however, 
from  the  dedication  of  the  History,  that  Buchanan  had 
ceased  for  some  time  before  its  publication  to  take  an 
active  part  in  James's  education.  He  speaks  in  this  of 
"the  incurable  illness"  which  made  him  incapable  of 
"  discharging  the  office  entrusted  to  me  of  cultivating  the 
genius  "  of  the  young  King  ;  and  presents  the  book  as 
making  up  in  some  degree  for  that  personal  failure.  The 
History  ends  witli  the  death  of  the  Regent  Lennox,  he 
who  was  killed  in  Stirling  almost  under  the  historian's 
eyes,  and  when  Scotland  was  still  distracted  between  two 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION. 

parties,  and  in  a  state  of  civil  warfare.  It  has  been  made 
a  subject  of  reproach  to  Buchanan  that  he  stopped  his 
chronicle  before  the  beginning  of  the  Regency  of  Morton, 
because  of  his  personal  hatred  to  that  brave  and  able 
personage — a  singular  charge,  seeing  that  Buchanan  lived 
only  a  few  months  after  the  last  Kegent  of  Scotland  ;  and 
he  has  expressly  mentioned  in  one  of  his  dedications 
the  increased  tranquillity  which  was  the  result  of  Morton's 
government. 

It  is  in  Edinburgh  we  find  the  old  man  of  letters  in  the 
last  scene  of  his  long  and  laborious  life.  In  September 
1581  he  was  visited  by  three  gentlemen  from  St.  Andrews, 
one  of  whom  gives  us  the  most  lifelike  and  interesting 
account  of  this  last  interview.  It  would  have  been  still 
more  interesting  had  they  afforded  some  indication  where 
they  found  him,  whether  he  had  some  pleasant  room 
granted  to  him  in  Holyrood,  after  so  many  years  with  the 
King,  a  suitable  retreat  for  his  old  age  ;  or  if  he  had  re- 
tired to  some  private  lodging  in  the  Canongate  to  end  his 
days.  His  visitors  make  no  mention  of  such  unimportant 
circumstances,  but  they  leave  us  a  most  touching  and 
faithful  picture  of  the  end  of  his  life.  These  visitors  were 
the  famous  Andrew  Melville,  Principal  of  the  New  Col- 
lege at  St.  Andrews,  a  scholar  almost  as  distinguished  as 
himself,  who  had  at  an  earlier  period  been  Buchanan's 
pupil,  and  who  had  acquired  his  great  knowledge  in  the 
same  way,  in  the  famous  schools  of  the  continent  ;  James 
Melville,  his  nephew,  minister  of  Kilrenny  on  the  shores 
of  Fife ;  and  Thomas  Buchanan,  the  cousin  of  the  dying 
historian.  James  Melville  relates  this  last  visit  as 
follows  : — 

"  That  September  in  time  of  vacans,  my  uncle  Mr.  Andrew, 

Mr.  Thomas  Buchanan  and  I,  hearing  that  Mr.  George  Buchanan 

was  weak,  and  his  Historic  under  the  press,  past  over  to  Edin- 

bruck  annes  errand  (expressly)  to  visit  him  and  see  the  work, 

27 


418  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

When  we  came  to  his  chalmer  we  found  him  sitting  in  his  chair, 
teaching  his  young  man  that  servit  him  in  his  chalmer,  to  spell 
a,  b,  ab,  and  e,  b,  eb,  etc.  Efter  salutation  Mr.  Andro  says,  '  I 
see,  sir,  ye  are  not  idle.' — '  Better  this,'  quoth  he,  '  nor  stealing 
sheep— or  sitting  idle  which  is  as  ill.'  Thereafter  he  shew  us  the 
Epistle  Dedicatorie  to  the  King,  the  which  when  Mr.  Andro  had 
read  he  told  him  that  it  was  obscure  in  some  places,  and  wanted 
certain  words  to  perfeyt  the  sentence.  Sayes  he,  '  I  may  do  na 
mair  for  thinking  on  another  matter.'—'  What  is  that  ? '  says  Mr. 
Andro.  '  To  die,'  quoth  he  ;  '  but  I  leave  that  and  manie  more 
things  for  you  to  help.' 

"We  went  from  him  to  the  printer's  workhouse,  whom  we 
found  at  the  end  of  the  17  book  of  his  Cornicle  at  a  place  which 
we  thought  verie  hard  for  the  tyme,  which  might  be  an  occasion 
for  staying  the  haill  work,  anent  the  burial  of  Davie.  Therefore 
staying  the  printer  from  proceeding,  we  came  to  Mr.  George 
again,  and  fand  him  bedfast  by  his  custom,  and  asking  him  how 
he  did,  '  Ever  going  the  way  of  weilfare,'  says  he.  Mr.  Thomas, 
his  cousin,  shawes  him  of  the  hardness  of  that  part  of  his  Storie, 
that  the  King  would  be  offendit  with  it,  and  it  might  stay  all 
the  work.  '  Tell  me,  man,'  says  he,  '  gif  I  have  told  the  truth  ? ' 
— '  Yes,'  says  Mr.  Thomas,  '  Sir,  I  think  so.' — '  I  will  bide  his 
feud  and  all  his  kin's  then  ; '  quoth  he.  '  Pray,  pray  to  God  for 
me,  and  let  Him  direct  all.'  So  by  the  printing  of  his  Cornicle 
was  endit,  that  maist  learned,  wyse,  and  godly  man  endit  this 
mortal  life." 

He  was  a  pedagogue,  perhaps  something  of  a  pedant,  a 
hot  partisan,  a  special  pleader  ;  but  few  lives  can  show 
more  dignified  and  noble  end.  If  it  was  the  truth  he  had 
written  this  old  man  cared  for  nothing  else,  not  even  for 
that  fame  which  is  the  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds.  The 
King  might  keep  back  the  great  work  of  his  life,  but  he 
could  not  silence  the  lips  in  which  no  fear  of  man  was. 
Whatever  might  happen  afterwards,  Buchanan's  record 
was  clear  ;  to  have  told  the  truth  was  all  with  which  he 
had  anything  to  do. 

There  is  a  touch  of  what  for  want  of  a  better  word  we 
must  call  cynicism  in  the  humorous  indifference  with 


GREYFRIARS  CHURCHYARD.— Page  419. 

Koyal  Edinburgh. 


THE  SCHOLAR  OF  THE  REFORMATION.          419 

which  the  old  philosopher  is  said  to  have  discussed  his 
own  burial.  Finding,  as  the  story  goes,  that  there  was  not 
money  enough  in  the  house  for  the  last  expenses,  he  or- 
dered what  there  was  to  be  given  to  the  poor,  declaring 
that  he  was  not  concerned  as  to  what  was  to  become  of 
his  remains.  If  they  did  not  choose  to  bury  him  they 
might  let  him  lie,  he  said  in  grim  jest.  He  was,  however, 
reverently  buried  by  the  authorities  of  Edinburgh,  in  the 
historical  ctiurchyard  of  the  Greyfriars,  attended  by  "  a 
great  company  of  the  faithful/'  though  no  stone  seems 
ever  to  have  been  placed  to  indicate  the  spot  where  he  was 
laid.  Thus  in  some  unknown  corner  he  rests,  like  so 
many  other  illustrious  persons — a  man  who  never  rested 
in  his  life,  and  carried  down  his  labors  to  the  very  verge 
of  the  grave.  It  is  a  curious  satire  upon  human  justice 
that  his  name  should  have  been  kept  green  in  Scotland 
by  the  rough  jests  of  an  imaginary  Geordie  Buchanan, 
commonly  supposed  to  have  been  the  King's  fool,  as  ex- 
traordinary a  travesty  as  it  is  possible  to  conceive.  It  is 
almost  as  strange  a  twist  of  all  the  facts  and  meaning  of 
life  that  the  only  money  of  which  he  could  be  supposed  to 
be  possessed  at  his  death  should  have  been  one  hundred 
pounds  (Scots,  no  doubt),  arrears  of  the  pension  due  to 
him  from  the  Abbey  of  Crossraguel,  given  by  Queen  Mary 
to  that  learned  pupil  of  the  Sorbonne  and  lover  of  Lutetia 
with  whom  she  read  Latin  at  Holyrood  in  the  early  days 
before  trouble  came. 


PART  IV. 

• 

THE  MODERN  CITY. 
CHAPTER  I. 

A  BURGHER  POET. 

AFTER  the  extraordinary  climax  of  dramatic  interest 
which  brought  the  history  of  Edinburgh  and  of  Scotland 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  whole  world,  and  which  has  con- 
tinued ever  since  to  form  one  of  the  most  exciting  chapters 
in  general  history,  it  was  inevitable  that  when  that  fated 
Court  dispersed,  and  the  lady  who  was  its  charm  and  head 
disappeared  also  under  the  tragic  waves  which  had  been 
rising  to  engulf  her  there  should  fall  a  sudden  blank  into 
the  record,  a  chill  of  duluess  and  tedium,  the  charm  de- 
parted and  the  story  done.  In  fact,  it  was  not  at  all  so, 
and  the  metropolis  of  Scotland  continued  to  seethe  with 
contending  elements,  and  to  witness  a  continued  struggle, 
emphasized  by  many  a  martyrdom  and  deed  of  blood,  and 
many  a  desperate  battle  both  hand  to  hand  and  head  to 
head  in  the  streets  and  in  the  council  chambers,  all  with 
more  or  less  the  religious  question  involved,  and  all  help- 
ing to  work  out  the  final  settlement.  When  that  final  set- 
tlement came  after  all  the  tumults  and  blood  it  had  cost,  it 
is  scarcely  possible  not  to  feel  the  downfall  from  those  his- 
torical commotions  to  the  dead  level  of  a  certain  humdrum 
420 


EDINBURGH:  GENERAL  VIEW.— Page  420. 


Royal  Edinburgh, 


A  BURGHER  POET.  421 

good  attained,  which  was  by  no  means  the  perfect  state 
hoped  for,  yet  which  permitted  peace  and  moderate  com- 
fort and  the  growth  of  national  wellbeing.  The  little  homely 
church  towers  of  the  Revolution,  as  they  are  to  be  seen, 
for  instance,  along  the  coast  of  Fife,  are  not  more  unlike 
the  Gothic  spires  and  pinnacles  of  the  older  ages,  than  was 
the  limited  rustical  provision  of  the  Kirk,  its  restricted 
standing  and  lowered  pretensions,  unlike  the  ideal  of 
Knox,  the  theocracy  of  the  Congregation  and  the  Coven- 
ant. Denuded  not  only  of  the  wealth  of  the  old  commun- 
ion, but  of  those  beautiful  dwelling-places  which  the  pas- 
sion of  the  mob  destroyed  and  which  the  policy  of  the 
Reformers  did  not  do  too  much  to  preserve — deprived  of  the 
interest  of  that  long  struggle  during  which  each  contend- 
ing presbyter  had  something  of  the  halo  of  possible  martyr- 
dom about  his  head — the  Church  of  the  Revolution  Settle- 
ment lost  in  her  established  safety,  if  not  as  much  as  she 
gained,  yet  something  which  it  was  not  well  to  lose. 
And  the  kingdom  in  general  dropped  in  something  like 
the  same  way  into  a  sort  of  prose  of  existence,  with  most 
of  the  picturesque  and  dramatic  elements  gone.  Romance 
died  out  along  with  the  actual  or  possible  tragedies  of 
public  life,  and  Humor  came  in,  in  the  development  most 
opposed  to  romance,  a  humor  full  of  mockery  and  jest, 
less  tender  than  keen-sighted,  picking  out  every  false 
pretense  with  a  sharp  gibe  and  roar  of  laughter  often  rude 
enough,  not  much  considerate  of  other  people's  feelings. 
Perhaps  there  was  something  in  the  sudden  cessation  of 
the  tragic  character  which  had  always  hitherto  distingu- 
ished her  history,  which  produced  in  Scotland  this  reign  of 
rough  wit  and  somewhat  cynical,  satirical,  audacious  mirth, 
and  which  in  its  turn  helped  the  iconoclasts  of  the  previ- 
ous age,  and  originated  that  curious  hatred  of  show,  cer- 
emony, and  demonstration,  which  has  become  part  of  the 
Scottish  character.  The  scathing  sarcasm — unanswerable. 


422  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

yet  false  as  well  as  true — which  scorned  the  "  little  Saint 
Geilie,"  the  sacred  image,  as  a  mere  l '  painted  bradd,"  came 
down  to  every  detail  of  life  ;  the  rough  jokes  of  the  Par- 
liament House  at  every  trope  as  well  as  at  every  pretense  of 
superior  virtue  ;  the  grim  disdain  of  the  burgher  for  every 
rite  ;  the  rude  criticism  of  the  fields,  which  checked  even 
family  tenderness  and  caresses  as  shows  and  pretenses  of 
a  feeling  which  ought  to  be  beyond  the  need  of  demonstra- 
tion, were  all  connected  one  with  another.  Nowhere  has 
love  been  more  strong  or  devotion  more  absolute  ;  but  no- 
where else,  perhaps,  has  sentiment  been  so  restrained,  or 
the  keen  gleam  of  a  neighbor's  eye  seeing  through  the 
possible  too-much,  held  so  strictly  in  check  all  exhibitions 
of  feeling.  Jeanie  Deans,  that  impersonation  of  national 
character,  would  no  more  have  greeted  her  delivered  sister 
with  a  transport  of  kisses  and  rapture  than  she  would  have 
borne  false  testimony  to  save  her.  There  is  no  evidence 
that  this  extreme  self-restraint  existed  from  the  beginning 
of  the  national  history,  but  rather  everything  to  show 
that  to  pageants  and  fine  sights,  to  dress  and  decoration, 
the  Scots  were  as  much  addicted  as  their  neighbors.  But 
the  natural  pleasure  in  all  such  exhibitions  would  seem  to 
have  received  a  shock,  with  which  the  swift  and  summary 
overthrow  of  Mary's  empire  of  beauty  and  gaiety,  like  the 
moral  of  a  fable,  had  as  much  to  do  as  the  scornful  de- 
struction of  religious  image  and  altar.  The  succeeding 
generations  indemnified  themselves  with  a  laugh  and  a  gibe 
for  the  loss  of  that  fair  surface  both  of  Church  and  Court : 
and  the  nation  lias  never  given  up  the  keen  criticism  of 
every  sham  and  seeming  which  exaggerated  the  absolutism 
of  its  natural  character,  and  along  with  the  destruction  of 
false  sentiment  imposed  a  proud  restraint  and  restriction 
upon  much  also  that  was  true. 

To  come  down  from  the  age  when  Mary  still  reigned  in 
Ilolvrood  and  Knox  in  St.   Giles's — and  Edinburgh  saw 


A  BURGHER  POET. 


423 


every  phase  of  passion  and  tragedy,  wild  love,  hatred,  re- 
venge, and  despair,  with  scarcely  less  impassioned  devo- 


ALLAN  RAMSAY  S   SHOP 


tion,  zeal,  and  fury  of  Reformation,  and  all  the  clang  of 
opposed  factions,  feuds,  and  frays  in  her  streets — to  the 


424  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

age  when  the  Parliament  House  and  its  law  courts  were 
the  center  of  Edinburgh;  when  Holyrood  was  the  debtors' 
sanctuary,  and  St.  Giles's  a  cluster  of  parish  churches, 
even  its  distinctive  name  no  longer  used  :  and  when  the 
citizens  clustered  about  the  Cross  of  afternoons  no  longer  to 
see  the  heralds  in  their  tabards  and  hear  the  royal  procla- 
mations, but  to  tell  and  spread  the  news  from  London  and 
discuss  the  wars  in  the  Low  Countries,  and  many  a  witty 
scandal,  gibes  from  the  Bench  and  repartees  from  the 
Bar,  the  humors  of  the  old  lords  and  ladies  in  thei" 
' '  Lodging  "  in  the  Canongate,  and  the  witticisms  of  the 
favorite  changehouse — is  as  great  a  leap  as  if  a  whole  world 
came  between.  The  Court  at  St.  Germains  retained  the 
devotion  of  many,  but  Anne  Stewart  was  on  the  throne, 
and  rebellion  was  not  thought  of,  while  everything  was 
still  full  of  hope  for  the  old  dynasty,  so  that  Edinburgh 
was  at  full  leisure  to  talk  and  jeer  and  gossip  and  make 
encounter  of  wits,  with  nothing  more  exciting  in  hand. 
In  this  tranquil  period,  his  apprenticeship  being  finished, 
a  certain  young  man  from  the  west,  by  the  name  of  Allan 
Eamsay,  opened  a  shop  in  the  High  Street  "  opposite 
Niddy's  Wynd  "  as  a  "weegmaker" — perhaps,  if  truth 
were  known,  a  barber's  shop,  in  all  ages  known  as  the 
center  of  gossip  wherever  it  appears.  It  is  odd,  by  the 
way,  that  a  place  so  entirely  dedicated  to  the  service  of  the 
male  portion  of  the  population,  and  where  women  have 
no  place,  should  have  this  general  reputation  ;  but  so  it 
has  always  been.  He  had  spent  his  early  years  as  a  shep- 
herd on  Crawford  Moor  in  the  Upper  Ward  of  Clydesdale, 
and  no  doubt  had  there  learned  every  song  that  floated 
about  the  country-side.  "  Honest  Allan  "  was  in  every 
respect  a  model  of  the  well-doing  and  prosperous  Edin- 
burgh shopkeeper  of  his  time — a  character  not  too  entirely 
engrossed  by  business,  always  ready  for  a  frolic,  a  song,  a 
decorous  bout  of  drinking,  and  known  in  all  the  haunts 


A  BURGHER  POET. 

of  the  cheerful  townsmen:  tolerant  in  morals  yet  always 
respectable,  fond  of  gossip,  fond  of  fun,  and  if  not  fond  of 
money  yet  judiciously  disposed  to  gain  as  much  as  he  could 
make,  or  as  his  apprentices  and  careful  wife  could  make 
for  him  :  and  gradually  progressing  from  a  smaller  to  a 
larger  shop,  from  a  less  to  a  more  "  genteel "  business,  and 
finally  to  a  comfortable  retirement. 

In  such  a  life  there  was  plenty  of  room  for  enjoyment, 
for  relaxation,  and  no  want  of  leisure  to  tell  a  good  story 
or  compose  a  string  of  couplets  where  that  gift  existed, 
even  when  most  busy.  We  may  imagine  that  he  did  not 
sit  much  at  his  block,  but  rather  in  the  front  of  the  shop 
amusing  his  customers,  while  their  periwigs  were  curled 
or  fitted,  with  Edinburgh  gossip  and  wit  in  the  familiarity 
of  common  citizenship,  or  with  anecdotes  which  enlightened 
the  country  gentlemen,  especially  those  from  the  west, 
the  last  ~bon  mot  of  the  Parliament  House,  or  the  Lord 
Advocate's  latest  deliverance.  And  his  clubs  were  as 
numerous  as  those  of  a  young  man  of  fashion.  The 
"Easy  Club"  was  composed  of  "young  anti-unionists," 
which  indicates  the  politics  which  the  wigmaker  mildly 
held  in  cheerful  subjection  to  the  powers  that  were.  No 
doubt  he  would  have  gone  to  the  death  (in  verse)  for  the 
privileges  of  Edinburgh  :  but  the  anti-unionism  or  senti- 
mental Jacobitism  of  his  class  was  not  of  a  kind  to 
trouble  any  Government.  And  except  the  question  of  the 
Union  which  was  settled  early  in  his  career,  politics  do  not 
seem  to  have  been  of  an  exciting  character  in  Edinburgh. 
Local  matters,  always  the  most  interesting  of  any  to  the 
inhabitants  of  a  town  not  great  enough  to  be  cosmo- 
politan but  full  of  distinct  and  striking  individuality, 
furnished  the  poetical  wigmaker  with  his  first  themes. 
It  would  seem  that  he  only  learned  to  rhyme  from  the 
necessity  of  i-rkin  f  1m  part  in  the  high  jinks  of  the 
club  ;  at  least  ail  his  early  productions  were  intended 


426  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

for  its  diversion.  An  "  Elegy  on  Maggie  Johnstone," 
mistress  of  a  convenient  "  public  "  at  Morningside,  then 
described  as  "a,  mile  and  a  half  west  from  Edinburgh,"  a 
suburb  on  "the  south  side/' though  now  a  part  of  the 
town — which  would  lie  in  the  way  of  the  members  when 
they  took  their  walks  abroad,  and  no  doubt  formed  the 
end  of  many  a  Sabbath  day's  ramble — was  almost  the  first 
of  his  known  productions  ;  and  we  may  well  believe  that 
the  jovial  shopkeepers  were  delighted  with  the  sensation 
of  possessing  a  poet  of  their  own,  and  held  many  a  discus- 
sion upon  the  new  verses — brimful  of  local  allusions  and 
circumstances  which  everybody  knew — over  their  ale  as 
they  rested  in  the  village  changehouse,  or  among  the 
fumes  of  their  punch  in  their  evening  assemblies.  Verses 
warm  from  the  poet's  brain  have  a  certain  intoxicating 
quality  akin  to  the  toddy,  and  no  doubt  the  citizens  slapped 
their  thighs  and  snapped  their  fingers  with  delight  when 
some  well-known  name  appeared,  the  incidents  of  some 
story  they  knew  by  heart,  or  the  features  of  some  familiar 
character.  The  satisfaction  of  finding  in  what  they  would 
call  poetry  a  host  of  local  allusions  about  which  there  was 
no  ambiguity,  which  they  understood  like  their  ABC, 
would  rouse  the  first  hearers  to  noisy  enthusiasm.  And 
thus  encouraged,  the  cheerful  bard  (as  he  was  called  in 
those  days)  went  on  till  his  fame  penetrated  beyond  the 
club.  Another  elegy  of  a  more  serious  description  was  so 
highly  thought  of  that  it  was  printed  and  given  to  the 
world  by  the  club  itself.  That  world  meant  Edinburgh, 
its  many  tradesmen,  the  crowded  inhabitants  of  all  the 
lofty  "lands"  about  that  center  of  busy  social  life  where 
the  Cross  still  stood,  and  the  old  Tolbooth  gloomed  over 
the  street,  cut  in  two  by  its  big  bulk  and  the  fabric  of  the 
Luckenbooths,  a  sort  of  island  of  masonry  which  divided 
what  is  now  the  broad  and  airy  High  Street  opposite  St. 
Giles's  into  two  narrow  straits.  The  writers  and  the  ad- 


A  BURGHER  POET.  427 

vocates,  the  professors  and  the  clergy,  Councilor  Ploy  dell 
and  his  kind,  were  not  the  first  to  discover  that  Ramsay 
the  wigmaker  had  something  in  him  more  than  the  other 
rough  wits  of  the  shops  and  markets.  And  by  and  by  the 
goodwives  in  their  high  lodgings,  floor  over  floor  ever 
glad  of  something  new,  learnt  to  send  one  of  the  bairns 
with  a  penny  to  the  wigmaker's  shop  in  the  afternoon  to  see 
if  Allan  Ramsay  had  printed  a  ne\v  poem  :  and  received 
with  rapture  the  damp  broadsheet  brought  in  fresh  from 
the  press,  with  a  fable  or  a  song  in  "gude  braid  Scots," 
or  a  witty  letter  to  some  answering  rhymester  full  of  local 
names  and  things.  There  was  no  evening  paper  in  those 
days,  and  had  there  been  it  was  very  unlikely  it  would 
have  penetrated  into  all  the  common  stairs  and  crowded 
tenements.  But  Allan's  songs,  of  which  Jean  or  Peggy 
would  "ken  the  tune,"  and  the  stories  that  would  delight 
the  bairns,  were  better  worth  the  penny  than  news  from 
distant  London,  which  was  altogether  foreign  am  un- 
known to  that  humble  audience. 

This  no  doubt  was  the  sort  of  fame  and  widespread 
popular  appreciation  which  made  the  statesman  of  that 
day — was  it  Fletcher  of  Saltoim  or  Duncan  Forbes  the 
great  Lord  President  ? — bid  who  would  make  the  laws  so 
long  as  he  might  make  the  songs  of  the  people.  He  had 
in  all  likelihood  learnt  Allan's  widely  flying,  largely  read 
verses,  which  every  gamin  of  the  streets  knew  by  heart,  in 
his  childhood.  And  though  they  might  not  be  in  general 
of  a  very  ennobling  quality,  there  are  glimpses  of  a  higher 
poetry  to  come  in  some  of  these  productions,  and  a  great 
deal  of  cheerful  self-assertive  content  and  local  patriotism, 
as  well  as  of  rough  fun  and  jest.  If  it  were  not  for  the 
very  unnecessary  introduction  of  Apollo  as  the  god  to 
whom  "the  bard  "  addresses  his  wishes,  there  would  be 
something  not  unworthy  of  Burns  in  the  following  lines. 
The  poet  has  of  course  introduced  first,  us  a  needful  con- 


428  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

trast,  "  the  master  o'  a  guid  estate  that  can  ilk  thing 
afford,"  and    who  is  much   "  dawted    (petted)   by  the 

gods"— 

"  For  me,  I  can  be  weel  content 
To  eat  my  bannock  on  the  bent, 

And  kitchen't  wi'  fresh  air ; 
O'  lang-kail  I  can  make  a  feast 
And  cantily  haud  up  my  crest. 
And  laugh  at  dishes  rare. 
Nought  frae  Apollo  I  demand, 

But  through  a  lengthened  life, 
My  outer  fabric  firm  may  stand, 

And  saul  clear  without  strife. 
May  he  then,  but  gi'e  then, 

Those  blessings  for  my  share  ; 
I'll  fairly  and  squarely, 
Quit  a',  and  seek  nae  mair." 

It  was  no  donbt  after  he  had  achieved  this  reputation  of 
the  streets — a  thing  more  difficult  than  greater  fame — that 
his  imagination  developed  in  more  continuous  and  refined 
effort.  Whether  he  himself  printed  his  penny  broadsheet 
as  well  as  sold  it  we  are  not  informed,  but  as  he  began 
after  a  while  to  combine  bookselling  with  wigmaking  we 
may  be  allowed  to  imagine  that  the  press  which  produced 
these  flying  leaves  was  either  in  or  near  his  shop.  It  is 
difficult  to  realize  the  swarming  of  life  and  inhabitation 
within  the  high  houses  of  the  old  town  in  an  age  when 
comfort  was  little  understood  :  and  even  the  concentration 
within  so  small  a  space,  of  business,  work,  interest,  idle- 
ness, and  pleasure,  is  hard  to  comprehend  by  people  who 
have  been  used  to  appropriate  a  separate  center  to  each  of 
the  great  occupations  or  exercises  of  mankind.  When 
London  was  comparatively  a  small  town  it  had  still  its  pro- 
fessional distinctions — the  Court,  the  Temple,  the  City,  the 
place  where  law  was  administered  and  where  money  was 
made,  where  society  had  its  abode  and  poverty  found  a 
shelter.  But  in  old  Edinburgh  all  were  piled  one  on  the 


A  BURGHER  POET. 


429 


top  of  another — the  Parliament  House  within  sight  of  the 
shops,  the  great  official  and  the  poor  artificer  under  the 
same  roof  :  and  round  that  historical  spot  over  which  St. 
Giles's  crown  rose  like  the  standard  of  the  city,  the  whole 


CROWN  OF  ST.  GILES'S. 


community  crowded,  stalls  and  booths  of  every  kind  en- 
cumbering the  street,  while  special  pleaders  and  learned 
judges  picked  their  steps  in  their  dainty  buckled  shoes 
through  the  mud  and  refuse  of  the  most  crowded  noisy 


430  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

market-place,  and  all  the  great  personages  of  Edinburgh 
paced  the  "  plainstanes  "  close  by  at  certain  hours,  un- 
heeding either  smell  or  garbage  or  the  resounding  cries  of 
the  street. 

In  such  a  crowded  center  the  sheets  that  were  being  read 
so  eagerly,  laughed  over  by  the  very  cadgers  at  their 
booths,  conned  by  the  women  at  the  stairheads,  lying  on 
every  counter,  where  Allan's  new  verses  would  be  pulled 
to  pieces  by  brother  wits  who  had  known  him  to  do  better, 
or  heard  a  livelier  witticism  from  his  lips  no  farther  gone 
than  yestreen,  must  very  soon  have  come  to  the  notice  of 
the  westland  lads  at  the  college,  and  from  them  to  the 
learned  professors,  and  still  more  directly  to  the  lively 
groups  that  went  and  came  to  the  Parliament  House. 
Already  the  wigmaker's  shop  had  thriven  and  prospered  ; 
the  little  man,  short  and  fat  and  jovial,  who  had  begun  to 
lay  out  books  in  his  window  under  the  shadow  of  the  curled 
and  powdered  periwigs,  found  the  results  of  his  double 
traffic  more  satisfactory  than  poets  use.  He  boasts  in  one 
of  his  rhymed  addresses  that  he  thatches  the  outside  and 
lines  the  inside  of  many  a  douce  citizen,  "and  baithways 
gathers  in  the  cash."  He  adds — 

"And  fain  would  prove  to  ilka  Scot, 
That  poortith's  no  the  poet's  lot." 

It  must  have  been  altogether  an  odd  little  establishment 
— the  wigs  set  out  upon  their  blocks,  perhaps,  who  knows, 
the  barber's  humbler  craft  being  plied  behind  backs  ;  the 
books  multiplying  daily  on  shelves  and  in  windows,  and 
the  ragged  boys  with  their  pennies  waiting  to  see  if  there 
was  a  new  piece  by  Allan  Ramsay  ;  while  perhaps  in  the 
corner,  where  lay  the  lists  of  the  new  circulating  library 
— the  first  in  Scotland — Miss  Lydia  Languish  with  her 
maid,  or  my  lady's  gentlewoman  from  some  fine  house  in 
the  Canongate,  had  come  in  to  ask  for  the  last  new  novel 


A  BURGHER  POET.  431 

from  London,  the  Scotch  capital  having  not  yet  begun  to 
produce  that  article  for  itself. 

One  may  be  sure  that  Allan,  rotund  and  smiling,  was 
always  ready  for  a  crack  with  the  ladies,  and  to  recom- 
mend the  brand  new  Pamela,  the  support  of  virtue,  or  some 
contemporary  work  of  lesser  genius.  Though  the  general 
costume  was  like  that  worn  in  the  other  parts  of  the  island, 
perhaps  a  little  behind  London  fashions,  the  fair  visitors 
would  still  be  veiled  with  the  plaid,  the  fine  woven  screen 
of  varied  tartan  which  covered  the  head  like  a  hood,  and 
could  on  occasion  conceal  the  face  more  effectually  than 
Spanish  lace  or  Indian  muslin — a  singular  peculiarity  not 
ancient  and  scarcely  to  be  called  national,  since  the  tartan 
came  from  the  still-despised  Highlands,  and  these  were 
Lowland  ladies  who  wore  the  plaid.  This  fashion  would 
seem  to  have  begun  to  be  shaken  by  Ramsay's  time,  for  he 
pleads  its  cause  with  all  the  fervor  of  a  poetical  advocate. 
There  is  something  grotesque  in  the  arguments,  and  still 
more  grotesque  in  the  names  by  which  he  distinguishes 
the  wearers  of  the  plaid. 

"  Light  as  the  pinions  of  the  airy  fry 
Of  larks  and  linnets  who  traverse  the  sky, 
Is  the  Tartana,  spun  so  very  fine 
Its  weight  can  never  make  the  fair  repine  ; 
Nor  does  it  move  beyond  its  proper  sphere, 
But  lets  the  gown  in  all  its  shape  appear  ; 
Nor  is  the  straightness  of  her  waist  denied 
To  be  by  every  ravished  eye  surveyed  ; 
For  this  the  hoop  may  stand  at  largest  bend, 
It  comes  not  nigh,  nor  can  its  weight  offend. 

"  If  the  shining  red  Campbella's  cheeks  adorn, 
Our  fancies  straight  conceive  the  blushing  morn, 
Beneath  whose  dawn  the  sun  of  beauty  lies, 
Nor  need  we  light  but  from  Campbella's  eyes. 
If  lined  with  green  Stuarta's  plaid  we  view, 
Or  thine,  Ramseia,  edged  around  with  blue, 


432  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

One  shows  the  spring  when  nature  is  most  kind, 
The  other  heaven  whose  spangles  lift  the  mind." 

The  description  of  the  manner  in  which  this  engaging 
garment  is  worn  has  all  the  more  reason  to  be  quoted  that 
it  was  not  only  a  new  piece  by  Allan  Kamsay,  but  affords 
a  glimpse  of  the  feminine  figures  that  were  to  be  seen  in 
the  High  Street  of  Edinburgh  going  to  kirk  and  market 
in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century.  There  is, 
too,  a  pleasant  touch  of  individuality  in  the  musical  street 
cry  that  wakes  the  morn. 

"  From  when  the  cock  proclaims  the  rising  day, 
And  milkmaids  sing  around  sweet  curds  and  whey, 
Till  gray-eyed  twilight,  harbinger  of  night, 
Pursues  o'er  silver  mountains  sinking  light, 
I  can  unwearied  from  my  casements  view 
The  Plaid,  with  something  still  about  it  new. 
How  are  we  pleased  when,  with  a  handsome  air, 
We  see  Hepburna  walk  with  easy  care  ! 
One  arm  half  circles  round  her  slender  waist, 
The  other  like  an  ivory  pillar  placed, 
To  hold  her  plaid  around  her  modest  face, 
Which  saves  her  blushes  with  the  gayest  grace ; 
If  in  white  kids  her  slender  fingers  move, 
Or,  unconfined,  jet  through  the  sable  glove. 

"  With  what  a  pretty  action  Keitha  holds 
Her  plaid,  and  varies  oft  its  airy  folds ! 
How  does  that  naked  space  the  spirits  move, 
Between  the  ruffled  lawn  and  envious  glove  ! 
We  by  the  sample,  though  no  more  be  seen, 
Imagine  all  that's  fair  within  the  screen. 

"  Thus  belles  in  plaids  veil  and  display  their  charms, 
The  love-sick  youth  thus  bright  Humea  warms, 
And  with  her  graceful  mien  her  rivals  all  alarms." 

The  fair  Hepburna,  Humea,  Campbella,  and  the  rest 
may  tempt  the  reader  to  a  smile  ;  but  the  picture  has  its 
value,  and  is  a  detail  of  importance  in  the  realization  of 


A  BURGHER  POET.  433 

that  animated  and  crowded  scene.  By  this  time  probably 
Ramsay  had  removed  his  shop  to  the  end  of  the  Lucken- 
booths,  which  faced  "  east  "  to  the  unencumbered  portion 
of  the  High  Street,  where  the  City  Cross  stood,  and  where 
all  the  notable  persons  made  their  daily  promenade.  It 
was  here  that  he  was  visited  by  a  kindred  spirit,  the  poet 
Gay,  who  had  been  brought  to  Edinburgh  by  his  patroness 
the  Duchess  of  Queensberry,  and  soon  formed  acquain- 
tance with  the  local  poet.  The  two  little  roundabout 
bards  used  to  stand  together  at  the  door  of  the  shop  to 
watch  the  crowd,  in  which  no  doubt  Ramsay  would  be 
gratified  by  a  friendly  nod  from  the  Lord  President,  and 
swell  with  civic  and  with  personal  pride  to  point  out  to 
the  English  visitor  that  distinguished  Scotsman  the  loyal 
and  the  learned  Forbes.  The  Cross,  round  which  this 
genteel  and  witty  crowd  assembled  daily,  stood  then,  ac- 
cording to  the  plans  of  the  period,  in  the  center  of  the 
High  Street,  where  it  had  been  removed  for  the  advantage 
of  greater  space  in  the  previous  century.  And  the  view 
from  Ramsay's  shop — from  which  by  this  time  the  wigs 
had  entirely  disappeared,  and  which  was  now  a  refined  and 
cultured  bookseller's,  adorned  outside  with  medallions  of 
two  poets,  Scotch  and  English,  Ben  Jonson  and  Drum- 
mond  of  Hawthornden — was  bounded  by  the  gate  of  the 
Netherbow  with  its  picturesque  tower,  and  glimpses 
through  the  open  roadway,  of  the  Canongate  beyond,  and 
the  cross  lines  of  busy  traffic  leading  to  Leith.  It  was 
thus  a  wide  space  between  the  lines  of  high  houses,  more 
like  a  Place  than  a  street,  upon  which  the  two  gossips 
gazed,  no  doubt  with  a  complacent  thought  that  their  liv- 
ing presence  underneath  carried  out  the  symbol  of  the  two 
heads  above — the  poets  of  England  and  of  Scotland — and 
that  in  the  teeming  street  below  them  were  many  who 
pointed  out  to  each  other  this  new  and  delightful  com- 
bination. They  were  not  great  poets,  either  of  these 
28 


434  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

round,  fat,  oily  men  of  verse.  And  yet  the  association 
was  pleasant.  Perhaps  the  duchess's  coach-and-six,  in 
which  the  English  bard  had  been  conveyed  from  London, 
might  drive  through  the  open  port,  as  the  two  stood  de- 
lighted, watching  the  pedestrians  hurry  out  of  the. way 
and  the  great  lawyers  and  officials  preparing  to  pay  their 
devoirs  to  her  Grace  as  she  drew  up  before  the  bookshop. 
No  doubt  they  thought  it  a  scene  to  be  remembered  in  the 
history  of  letters.  She  was  at  Penicuik  House  on  a  visit 
to  the  Clerks,  who  were  friends  and  patrons  of  Allan,  and 
no  doubt  had  supped  or  drunk  a  dish  of  tea  at  New  Hall, 
where  the  Lord  President  (who  was  only  the  Lord  Advo- 
cate in  those  days)  often  took  his  ease  in  his  cousin's  house 
where  Ramsay  was  a  familiar  and  frequent  guest.  When 
Allan  made  wigs  no  longer,  when  all  his  occupations  were 
about  books,  and  everybody  in  Edinburgh,  gentle  and 
simple,  knew  him  as  a  poet,  he  would  be  still  more  free  to 
make  his  jokes  and  his  compliments  to  all  those  fine 
people.  But  at  no  time  was  the  genial  little  poet  "  blate," 
as  he  would  himself  have  said.  There  was  no  shyness  in 
him.  He  "braw'd  it,"  as  he  says,  with  no  doubt  the 
finest  of  periwigs,  long  before  he  had  ceased  to  be  a  skull- 
thatcher,  and  swaggered  through  the  wynds  and  about  the 
Cross  with  the  best.  The  Edinburgh  shopkeeper  has 
never  been  "blate."  He  has  always  maintained  a  free- 
dom of  independence  which  has  nothing  of  the  obsequious- 
ness of  more  common  traders,  and  which  gave  the  greater 
value  to  the  sly  compliment  which  he  would  insinuate 
between  two  jests.  No  doubt  Campbella  and  Hamilla 
would  laugh  at  the  little  man's  compliments,  his  bows  and 
admiring  glances,  yet  would  not  object  to  his  exposition 
of  the  tartan  screen,  the  delicate  silken  plaid  under  which 
they  shielded  their  radiant  complexions  and  golden  locks. 
Allan  must  have  seen  many  curious  sights  from  those 
windows.  The  riding  of  the  Parliament,  when  in  gallant 


A  BURGHER  POET.  435 

order  two  by  two — the  commissioners  of  the  boroughs  and 
the  counties  leading  the  way,  the  peers  following,  through 
the  guards  on  either  side  who  lined  the  streets — they  rode 
up  solemnly  from  Holyrood  to  the  Parliament  House,  with 
crown  and  sword  and  scepter  borne  before  them,  the  old 
insignia,  without  which  the  Acts  of  the  ancient  Parlia- 
ments of  Scotland  were  not  considered  valid — marching 
for -the  last  time  to  their  place  of  meeting  to  give  up  their 
trust — would  be  one  of  the  most  remarkable.  The  com- 
moners had  each  two  lackeys  to  attend  him,  the  barons 
three,  the  earls  four,  a  blue-coated  brigade,  relic  of  the 
old  days  when  no  gentleman  moved  abroad  without  a 
following ;  and  Lyou  King-at-arms  in  his  finery  to  direct 
the  line.  With  lamentation  and  humiliation  was  the  ses- 
sion closed  ;  even  wise  men  who  upheld  the  Union  con- 
senting to  the  general  pang  with  which  the  last  Scots 
Parliament  went  its  way.  And  the  glare  of  the  fire  must 
have  lighted  up  the  poet's  rooms,  and  angry  sparks  fallen, 
and  hoarse  roar  of  voices  drowned  all  domestic  sounds, 
when  the  Porteous  Mob  turned  Edinburgh  streets  into  a 
fierce  scene  of  tragedy  for  one  exciting  night.  It  would 
be  vain  indeed  to  describe  again  what  Scott  has  set  before 
us  in  the  most  vivid  brilliant  narrative.  Such  a  scene 
breaking  into  the  burgher  quietude — the  decent  house- 
holds which  had  all  retired  into  decorous  darkness  for  the 
night  waking  up  again  with  lights  flitting  from  story  to 
story,  the  axes  crashing  against  the  doors  of  the  Tolbooth, 
the  wild  procession  whirling  down  the  tortuous  gloom  of 
the  West  Bow — was  such  an  interruption  of  monotonous 
life  as  few  towns  in  the  eighteenth  century  could  have 
equalled  ;  and  it  is  curious  to  remember  the  intense 
national  feeling  and  keen  patriotic  understanding  of  how 
far  the  populace  would  or  could  endure  interference,  which 
made  Duncan  Forbes  in  his  place  in  Parliament  stand  up 
as  almost  the  defender  of  that  wild  outburst  of  lawlessness. 


436  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

and  John  of  Argyle  turn  from  the  royal  presence  to  pre- 
pare his  hounds,  as  he  said,  against  the  Queen's  threat  of 
turning  the  rebellious  country  into  a  desert.  These  proud 
Scotsmen  had  supported  the  Union  :  they  had  perceived 
its  necessity  and  its  use  :  but  there  was  a  point  at  which 
all  their  susceptibilities  took  fire,  and  Whig  lords  and 
politicians  were  at  one  with  every  high-handed  Tory  of 
the  early  times. 

Allan  Eamsay  must  also  have  seen,  though  he  says 
nothing  of  it,  the  brief  occupation  of  Edinburgh  by  the 
unfortunate  Prince  Charles  Edward,  and  at  a  distance  the 
pathetic  little  Court  in  Holyrood,  the  Jacobite  ladies  in 
their  brief  glory,  the  fated  captains  of  that  wild  little  army, 
in  which  the  old  world  of  tradition  and  romance  made  its 
last  outbreak  upon  modern  prose  and  the  possibilities  of 
life.  One  would  imagine  that  for  a  man  who  had  lived 
through  that  episode  in  the  heart  of  the  old  kingdom  of 
the  Stewarts,  and  whose  house  lay  half-way  between  the 
artillery  of  the  castle,  where  a  hostile  garrison  sat  grimly 
watching  the  invaders  below,  and  the  camp  at  Holyrood — 
there  would  have  been  nothing  in  his  life  so  exciting, 
nothing  of  which  the  record  would  have  been  more  dis- 
tinct. But  human  nature,  which  has  so  many  eccentri- 
cities, is  in  nothing  so  wonderful  as  this,  that  the  most 
remarkable  historical  scenes  make  no  impression  upon  its 
profound  every  clay  calm,  and  are  less  important  to  memory 
than  the  smallest  individual  incident.  The  swarm  of 
the  wild  Highlanders  that  took  sudden  possession  of 
street  and  changehouse,  the  boom  of  the  cannon  overhead 
vainly  attempting  to  disperse  a  group  here  and  there  or 
kill  a  rebel,  and  the  consciousness  which  one  would  think 
must  have  thrilled  through  the  very  air,  that  under  those 
turrets  in  the  valley  was  the  most  interesting  young  ad- 
venturer of  modern  times,  the  heir  of  the  ancient  Scots 
kings,  their  undoubted  representative — how  could  these 


SMOLLETT'S  HOUSE. -Page  438. 


Royal  Edinburgh* 


A  BURGHER  POET. 

things  fail  to  affect  the  mind  even  of  the  most  steady-going 
citizen  ?  But  they  did,  though  we  cannot  comprehend  it. 
Allan  has  a  word  for  every  little  domestic  event  in  town 
or  suburbs,  but  there  is  not  a  syllable  said  either  by  him- 
self or  his  biographers  to  intimate  that  he  knew  what  was 
going  on  under  his  eyes  at  that  brief  and  sudden  moment, 
the  "  one  crowded  hour  of  glorious  life,"  which  cost  so 
much  blood  of  brave  men,  and  which  the  hapless  Prince 
paid  for  afterwards  in  the  disenchanted  tedium  of  many  a 
dreary  year. 

It  was  before  this  time,  however,  that  Ramsay  reached 
the  height  of  his  fame  and  of  his  productions  in  The  Gen- 
tle Shephei^d,  He  had  written  some  years  before  "  A  Pas- 
toral Dialogue  between  Patie  and  Roger,"  published  as 
usual  in  a  sheet  for  a  penny,  and  no  doubt  affording  much 
pleasure  to  the  great  popular  audience  to  whom  the  "new 
piece"  was  as  the  daily feuilleton,  that  friendly  dole  of 
fiction  which  sweetens  existence.  It  was  evidently  so 
successful  that  after  a  while  the  poet  composed  a  pendant 
— a  dialogue  between  Jenny  and  Peggy.  These  two  frag- 
ments pleased  the  fancy  of  both  the  learned  and  the  simple, 
and  no  doubt  called  forth  many  a  flattering  inquiry  after 
the  two  rustic  pairs  and  demands  for  the  rest  of  their  simple 
history,  which  inspired  the  author  to  weave  the  lovers  into 
the  web  of  a  continuous  story,  adding  the  rural  background, 
so  fresh  and  true  to  nature,  and  the  rustic  and  humorous 
characters  which  were  wanted  for  the  perfection  of  the 
pastoral  drama.  Few  poems  ever  have  attained  so  great 
and  so  immediate  a  success.  It  went  from  end  to  end  of 
Scotland,  everywhere  welcomed,  read,  conned  over,  got  by 
heart.  Such  a  fame  would  be  indeed  worth  living  for. 
The  fat  little  citizen  in  his  shop  became  at  once  the  poet 
of  his  country,  as  he  had  been  of  the  Edinburgh  streets. 
It  was  nearly  two  centuries  since  Dnubar  and  Davie  Lynd- 
say  had  celebrated  their  romantic  town  :  and  though  the 


438  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

name  of  the  latter  was  still  a  household  word  ("  You'll  no 
find  that  in  Davie  Lyudsay"  being  the  popular  scorn- 
ful dismissal  of  any  incredible  tale),  yet  their  works  had 
fallen  into  forgetfulness.  The  new  poet  was  received 
accordingly  with  acclamation.  People  did  not  talk  of 
sales  and  profits  in  those  days,  and  we  have  no  information 
as  to  the  numbers  issued,  or  the  time  they  took  to  find  a 
home  in  every  cottage,  as  well  as  to  receive  the  distinction 
of  illustration  and  critical  discussion,  which  proved  that 
it  was  not  only  the  people  who  interested  themselves  in 
the  new  poet,  but  a  more  highly  trained  and  difficult 
audience  as  well.  We  have  before  us  two  goodly  octavos 
in  which  the  little  rustical  comedy  is  enshrined  in  hun- 
dreds of  pages  of  notes  ;  and  where  the  argument  as  to  its 
localities,  identifying  every  spot,  occupies  chapter  after 
chapter  of  earnest  discussion,  proving  exactly  where  every 
cottage  is  situated,  and  that  New  Hall,  the  home  of 
the  Forbeses,  was  the  mansion  of  the  poem,  with  its  little 
farmsteading  round.  Shakspeare  could  not  have  been 
more  closely  followed,  and  we  doubt  if  the  localities  which 
he  has  made  famous  were  ever  discussed  at  such  length. 
I  can  remember  nearly  fifty  years  ago  investigating  with 
the  eagerness  of  a  child  to  whom  books  were  the  most 
precious  objects  in  existence,  the  little  shelf  high  on  the 
wall  at  the  bedhead,  where  a  very  old  woman,  an  old  nurse 
in  her  retirement,  kept  her  treasures,  and  mounted  high 
upon  a  chair,  finding  a  much-thumbed  unbound  copy  of 
The  Gentle  Shepherd  in  the  dim  twilight,  ruddy  with  the 
glimmer  of  the  fire,  of  the  cottage  room.  In  such  places 
it  was  never  absent ;  it  was  the  one  book  which  held  its 
ground  by  the  side  of  the  Bible  and  perhaps  a  volume  of 
old-world  devotion  Tlie  Crook  in  the  Lot,  or  TJie  Saint's 
ReKt.  Such  a  distinction  is  a  far  more  true  and  genuine 
triumph  than  the  sale  of  many  editions.  It  went  straight 
into  the  heart  of  the  peasant,  who  understood  and  appre- 


A  BURGHER  POET.  439 

ciated  every  scene  and  line.  And  it  was  discussed  by  all 
the  Edinburgh  clubs,  and  by  the  literati  who  knew  their 
Theocritus  and  could  write  dissertations  on  pastoral  poetry. 
The  greatest  poet  could  have  hoped  for  no  more. 

And  pastoral  poetry  was  the  fashion  of  the  time.  Ram- 
say himself  had  made  various  other  attempts  before  he 
lighted  upon  this  quiet  legitimate  strain.  We  read  with 
a  shudder  of  comic  horror  a  dialogue  "  On  the  Death  of 
Mr.  Addison,"  in  which  the  interlocutors  are  "  Richy 
and  Sandy,"  to  wit,  Sir  Richard  Steele  and  Mr.  Alexander 
Pope  !  who  bewail  their  loss,  which  is  far  worse  than  mis- 
fortune to  their  flocks,  or  the  scorn  of  their  lasses,  being 
no  less  than  this,  that  "  Acldie,  that  played  and  sang  so 
sweet,  is  dead  "  !  The  poet  received,  indeed,  a  complimen- 
tary copy  of  verses  upon  this  production,  in  which  he  is 
thus  addressed — 

"  Well  fare  thee,  Allan,  who  in  mother  tongue 
So  sweetly  hath  of  breathless  Addy  sung  : 
His  endless  fame  thy  nat'ral  genius  fired, 
And  thou  hast  written  as  if  he  inspired. 
'  Richy  and  Sandy,'  who  do  him  survive, 
Long  as  thy  rural  stanzas  last,  shall  live." 

The  grotesque  in  poetry  could  scarcely  go  farther.  Mr. 
Burchett,  who  addressed  good  Allan  in  these  rhymes,  was 
the  refined  gentleman  who  put  the  wigmaker's  poems  into 
English.  "  Richy  and  Sandy  "  was  contained  in  a  volume 
which  Ramsay  published  by  subscription,  and  which 
brought  him  in,  to  the  immense  admiration  of  his  biog- 
rapher, four  hundred  guineas  sterling,  which  no  doubt 
was  a  very  admirable  recompense  indeed  for  so  many  fool- 
ish verses.  This  volume  contained,  among  other  things, 
Ramsay's  bold  continuation  of  "  Christ's  Kirk  on  the 
Green, "  which  the  same  biographer  describes  as  "King 
James  the  First's  ludicrous  poem/'  in  which  the  poet  of 
the  High  Street  skilfully  turns  the  poet-monarch's  rustic 


440  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

revel  into  a  vulgar  village  debauch.  But  these  pieces  of 
presumption  and  non-comprehension  are  happily  all  dead 
and  gone,  and  Ramsay's  reputation  rests  upon  a  happier 
basis.  It  is  not  a  small  matter  to  have  pervaded  a  whole 
country  with  the  simple  measures  of  a  rural  idyll — a  poem 
in  which  there  are  not  perhaps  five  lines  of  poetry,  but 
which  is  fragrant  of  the  moors  and  fields,  full  of  rustic 
good  sense  and  feeling,  and  as  free  of  harm  or  offense  as 
the  most  severe  moralist  could  desire.  This  latter  quality 
is  all  the  more  remarkable  as  it  belongs  to  an  age  not  at 
all  squeamish  in  these  matters,  and  to  which  the  frankest 
assaults  upon  a  heroine's  virtue  were  supposed  to  be  quite 
adapted  for  the  treatment  of  fiction.  But  there  is  no 
Lovelace  in  The  Gentle  Shepherd  ;  the  rustic  love-making 
is  ardent,  but  simple  and  without  guile.  The  swains  re- 
spect as  much  as  they  admire  their  nymphs  :  the  nymphs 
are  confident  in  their  frank  innocence,  and  fear  no  evil ; 
the  old  fathers  sit  cheerful  and  sagacious  at  their  doors 
and  indulge  in  their  cracks,  not  less  pleased  with  them- 
selves and  their  share  of  life  than  are  the  voung  ones  with 

»/  o 

their  livelier  pleasures  :  the  cows  breathe  balmy  breath 
into  the  wild  freshness  of  the  pastoral  scenery.  There  is 
scarcely  anything  affected,  false,  or  even  stilted  in  the 
poetical  dialogues  which,  with  a  little  license  for  the  verse 
and  something  for  the  sentiment,  come  naturally  and 
simply  from  the  wholesome,  genial  young  shepherds  and 
their  sweethearts.  To  say  this  is  to  say  as  much  as  the  most 
fastidious  critic  could  desire  from  such  a  composition. 

Nor  is  it  spoiled  by  classic  models  or  similes.  How 
Ramsay  succeeded  in  keeping  Venus  and  Cupid  out  of  it, 
in  forgetting  all  eclogues  and  pastorals,  Virgil  or  Theo- 
critus, and  indulging  in  nothing  that  was  out  of  place  in 
Scotland,  it  is  hard  to  tell.  The  Mantuan  bard,  the 
oaten  reed,  Philomela  and  her  songs,  Hymen,  Ganymede, 
Bacchus,  and  all  the  Olympian  baud  disport  themselves  in 


A  BURGHER  POET.  44! 

his  other  verses  :  but  The  Gentle  Shepherd  is  void  of  those 
necessary  adjuncts  of  the  eighteenth-century  muse.  The 
wimpling  burn  is  never  called  Helican  nor  the  heathery 
braes  Parnassus,  and  nothing  can  be  more  genuine,  more 
natural,  and  familiar  than  the  simple  scenery  of  Habbie's 
Howe — in  which  the  eager  critics  identified  every  scene, 
and  the  sensible  poet  enhanced  his  art  by  a  perfect  truth 
to  nature.  The  Gentle  Shepherd  is  perhaps  the  only  so- 
called  Pastoral  of  which  this  can  be  said,  and  it  must  have 
required  no  small  amount  of  self-denial  to  dispense  with 
all  those  accustomed  auxiliaries.  Even  the  sentiments  are 
not  too  highflown  for  the  localit}r.  If  they  are  perhaps 
more  completely  purified  from  everything  gross  or  fleshly 
than  would  have  been  the  case  in  fact,  the  poet  has  not 
been  afraid  to  temper  passion  with  those  considerations 
which  naturally  rise  to  the  mind  of  the  young  farmer  in 
choosing  his  mate.  His  Peggy,  though  she  has  beauty 
enough  to  make  up  for  every  deficiency,  has  also  "  with 
innocence  the  wale  of  sense." 

"  In  better  sense  without  a  flaw, 
As  in  her  beauty,  far  excels  them  a'." 

She,  on  her  part,  anticipates  not  raptures  and  blisses  in 
her  marriage,  but  the  hallowed  usages  of  life. 

"  I'll  employ  with  pleasure  all  my  art 
To  keep  him  cheerful,  and  secure  his  heart. 
At  e'en,  when  he  comes  weary  frae  the  hill, 
I'll  have  a'  things  made  ready  to  his  will ; 
In  winter  when  he  toils  through  wind  and  rain, 
A  bleezin'  ingle,  and  a  clean  hearth-stane  ; 
And  soon  as  he's  flung  by  his  plaid  and  staff, 
The  seething  pot's  be  ready  to  tak'  aff." 

Ramsay's  sobriety  here  shines  in  comparison  with  all  the 
fables  and  idylls  of  his  age.  It  is  entirely  natural,  living, 
and  of  his  time.  Patie  plays  upon  a  flute  of  '•  plum-tree 
made  with  ivory  virls  round,"  which  he  bought  from  the 


442  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

proceeds  of  "  sax  good  fat  lambs  "  sold  at  the  West  Port, 
instead  of  the  rustic  pipe  or  oaten  reed,  which  in  his  heart 
of  hearts  no  doubt  our  wigmaker  thought  much  finer. 
Thus  he  secured  his  audience,  who  knew  nothing  about 
oaten  reeds,  and  instead  of  the  plaudits  of  the  dilettanti 
secured  the  true  fame  of  popular  comprehension  and 
knowledge.  Burns  was  far  higher  and  nobler  in  genius, 
and  the  worship  awarded  to  him  by  his  countrymen  is  one 
of  the  favorite  subjects  of  gibe  and  jest  among  writers  on 
the  other  side  of  the  Tweed.  But  even  Burns  had  not  the 
universal  acceptance,  the  absolute  command  of  his  audi- 
ence, which  belonged  to  honest  Allan.  There  were  poli- 
ticians and  there  were  ecclesiastics,  and  good  people 
neither  one  nor  the  other,  who  shook  their  troubled  heads 
over  the  plowman  who  would  not  confine  himself  to  the 
daisy  of  the  field  or  the  Saturday  night's  observances  of 
the -Cottar,  but  was  capable  of  Holy  Willie  and  the  Holy 
Fair.  But  Eamsay  had  no  gainsayer,  and  The  Gentle 
Shepherd  was  the  first  of  books  in  most  Lowland  homes. 
Its  construction,  its  language  and  sentiments,  are  all  as 
commonplace  as  could  be  imagined,  but  it  is  a  wholesome, 
natural,  pure,  and  unvarnished  tale,  and  the  mind  that 
brought  it  forth  (well  aware  of  what  pleased  his  public) 
and  the  public  who  relished  and  bought  it,  give  us  a  bet- 
ter view  of  the  honest  tastes  and  morals  of  the  period  than 
anything  else  which  has  come  to  us  from  that  time. 
There  has  always  been  a  good  deal  of  drinking,  and  other 
vices  still  less  consistent  with  purity  of  heart,  in  Scotland. 
Now  and  then  we  are  frightened  by  statistics  that  gives 
us  a  very  ill  name  ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  if  the 
national  heart  had  been  corrupt  The  Gentle  Shepherd  could 
have  afforded  it  such  universal  and  wholesome  delight. 

It  is  curious  to  find  two  very  ordinary  and  prosaic 
tradesmen  thus  in  the  front  of  popular  literature  in  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century.  There  is  no  com- 


A  BURGHER  POET.  443 

parison  between  Allan  Ramsay  and  Samuel  Bichardson  in 
respect  to  genius.  That  humdrum  old  bookseller  evoked 
by  some  miraculous  art  the  most  delicate  and  lovely  of 
creations  out  of  the  midst  of  revolting  and  disgusting 
circumstances.  Fielding  was  a  far  finer  gentleman,  a 
much  more  accomplished  writer,  even  a  greater  genius ; 
but  there  are  none  of  his  women  who  are  fit  to  tie  the  shoes 
of  Clarissa  Harlowe,  to  whom  indeed  there  exists  no  fit 
companion  out  of  Shakspeare.  Our  good-humored  Allan 
had  no  such  gift,  but  he  had  the  art  of  producing  one 
spotless  and  lifelike  tale,  absolutely  true  to  nature  and 
within  the  power  of  verification  by  any  reader,  which  was 
accepted  by  a  whole  country  with  enthusiasm  as  the  best 
rendering  of  its  rural  life.  We  doubt  if  there  ever  was  a 
greater  literary  triumph. 

Ramsay  would  not  have  been  the  true  man  he  was  to 
every  tradition  and  inheritance  of  his  class  had  he  not 
shown  a  modest  complacency  in  his  own  success.  He  was 
assailed,  we  are  told,  by  nameless  critics,  who  put  forth 
ee  A  Block  for  Allan  Ramsay's  Wigs,"  "  Remarks  on  Ram- 
say's Writings,"  and  so  forth — and  retaliated,  not  without 
dignity:  "Dull  foes,"  he  says,  "nought  at  my  hand 
deserve." 

"  The  blundering  fellows  ne'er  forget, 

About  my  trade  to  sport  their  fancies, 
As  if,  forsooth,  I  would  look  blate, 
At  what  my  honor  most  advances. 

"  Auld  Homer  sang  for's  daily  bread  ; 

Surprising  Shakspeare  fin'd  the  wool ; 
Great  Virgil  creels  and  baskets  made  ; 
And  famous  Ben  employed  the  trowel. 

"Yet  Dorset,  Lansdown,  Lauderdale, 

Bucks,  Stirling,  and  the  son  of  Angus, 
Even  monarchs,  and  o'  men  the  wale, 
Were  proud  to  be  enrolled  amang  us." 


444 


ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 


It  is  true  that  Homer  and  Shakspeare  might  be  surprised 
to  find  themselves  rubbing  elbows  with  the  wigmaker  of 
the  High  Street.  Still,  he  shows  a  fine  spirit,  and  his 
very  strut  is  respectable. 

In  the  end  of  his  life,  when  the  author  of  The  Gentle 
Shepherd  by  all  his  trades,  both  as  poet  and  shopkeeper, 
had  amassed  a  fortune,  he  built  himself  a  house  in  the 


ALLAN  RAMSAY'S  HOUSE. 

most  glorious  position  which 
poet  could  have  chosen.  It 
is  on  the  crest  of  the  hill,  a 
little  way  below  the  castle, 
and  is  still  to  be  seen  from 
Princess  Street — a  distinct 
feature  in  the  picturesque  and  varied  line  of  building. 
He  is  said,  though  on  what  authority  we  are  not  told,  to 
have  applied  to  the  Crown  for  ground  enough  to  build  a 


A  BURGHER  POET.  445 

cage  for  his  burd,  meaning  his  wife  :  which  is  supposed 
to  be  the  reason  why  he  built  his  house  in  an  octagonal 
shape  like  a  cage  :  his  wife,  however,  did  not  live  long 
enough  to  inhabit  it.  Additions  and  emendations  have 

•^ 

been  made,  so  that  there  is  no  great  peculiarity  in  the 
form  of  the  old  square  house  on  the  summit  of  the  green 
slope,  just  clear  of  the  rocks  of  the  castle,  as  it  is  visible 
to-day.  When  it  was  built  the  new  town  of  Edinburgh 
was  not  yet  dreamed  of,  and  nothing  disturbed  the 
panamora  of  green  fields  that  lay  between  Edinburgh  and 
the  Firth.  The  town  wall  was  falling  into  ruin,  yet  still 
existed  in  fragmentary  towers  and  ramparts  here  and 
there,  and  low  down  in  the  depths  of  the  descent,  which 
was  not  so  precipitous  there  as  under  the  castle,  the  high 
houses  and  green  braes  were  reflected  in  the  quiet  waters 
of  the  North  Loch.  From  thence  the  fields  and  scattered 
farmhouses,  the  Calton  Hill  in  unadorned  greenness,  a 
church  spire  and  a  cluster  of  village  roofs  here  and  there, 
led  the  eye  to  the  shining  of  the  Scottish  Sea,  the  great 
water  with  its  islands,  the  coast  of  Fife  with  its  dotted 
line  of  little  fishing  towns,  the  two  green  Lomonds  stand- 
ing softly  distinct  against  the  misty  line  of  more  distant 
hills.  It  was  the  same  view  that  moved  Fitz-Eustace 
to  ecstasy,  still  but  little  changed  in  the  eighteenth  century 
from  what  it  had  been  in  the  sixteenth.  And  pictur- 
esque as  Edinburgh  still  continues  to  be  in  spite  of  many 
modern  disadvantages,  it  was  no  doubt  infinitely  more 
picturesque  then,  crowning  the  rocky  ridge,  with  strag- 
gling lanes  and  wynds  dropping  steeply  down  into  the 
valley — opening  here  and  there  a  glimpse  of  the  green 
country  and  the  shimmer  of  the  Firth — while  on  the.  edge 
of  the  hill,  from  all  the  high  windows,  the  wide  landscape 
softened  into  distance  on  every  side,  into  the  far-off 
broken  ranges  of  mountains  and  cloudy  rolling  vapors, 
and  the  far-retiring  sweep  of  a  horizon  traversed  by  all  the 


446  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

lights  and  all  the  storms — a  wide  world  of  air  and  space 
and  infinite  variety.  The  life  of  our  busy  modern  world 
had  scarcely  yet  invaded  that  city  on  the  hill.  It  stood 
isolated  on  the  height  of  its  rock,  reigning  from  that 
domination  over  all  the  tranquil  country  :  while  within 
its  lines  still  thronged  and  clamored  an  active  noisy  popula- 
tion cooped  up  and  packed  together  as  if  it  were  still  un- 
safe to  stray  away  out  of  shelter  of  the  walls,  all  the 
faculties  and  trades,  all  the  wit  and  the  wealth,  one  above 
another,  with  the  concentration,  the  picturesqueness,  the 
universal  acquaintance  and  familiarity  of  a  medieval 
town.  And  beautiful  as  the  prospect  must  have  been 
from  those  high-built  houses,  it  could  scarcely  have  ex- 
ceeded the  sight  of  the  old  Edinburgh  of  the  kings  from 
without,  standing  high  above  the  level  of  the  soil,  with 
the  open  crown  of  St.  Giles's  rising  over  its  gray  heights, 
its  walls  broken  down  by  careless  peace  and  wellbeing,  its 
tall  tenements  standing  up  like  a  line  of  castles.  And  in 
the  night  with  its  glimmer  of  household  lights  at  every 
window  hanging  high  in  the  mid  air,  repeated  with  a 
gleam  in  the  waters  beneath  and  in  the  stars  above,  which 
sparkled  keen  out  of  the  northern  blue,  and  the  mist  of 
habitation,  the  smoke  of  the  fires  and  the  lamps  hanging 
over  all — confusing  outlines,  yet  revealing  all  the  more 
brightly  a  higher  and  a  higher  altitude  of  human  lights 
— what  a  wonderful  sight  rising  sheer  out  of  the  green 
and  silent  champaign  below  ! 

Such  was  royal  Edinburgh  still,  when  the  shopkeeper- 
poet,  with  his  jokes  and  his  quips,  and  his  good-humored 
self-esteem,  and  certainty  of  his  own  power,  settled  down 
in  Ramsay  Lodge.  It  would  be  well  if  all  poets  had  as 
prosperous  and  as  fair  a  retirement  for  their  old  age.  He 
lived  for  some  time  in  his  quaint  self-contained  (according 
to  the  equally  quaint  Scotch  phraseology)  birdcage  upon 
the  top  of  the  hill,  and  enjoyed  his  celebrity  and  his  ease 


A  BURGHER  POET.  447 

and  the  pleasant  conviction  that  "  I  the  best  and  fairest 
please."  His  only  son,  the  second  Allan  Ramsay,  was  a 
painter  of  some  reputation,  and  he  had  daughters  to  care 
for  him  and  keep  his  home  cheerful  as  long  as  he  lived. 
A  man  more  satisfied  with  his  lot  could  not  be.  His 
chirrup  of  self-satisfaction,  the  flattery,  yet  familiarity, 
of  his  address  to  all  the  noble  lords  and  lairds,  the  judges 
and  advocates,  his  laugh  of  jovial  optimism  and  personal 
content,  belong  perfectly  to  the  character  of  the  comfort- 
able citizen,  "  in  fair  round  belly  with  good  capon  lined," 
and  the  shopkeeper's  rather  than  the  poet's  desire  to 
please.  One  can  better  fancy  him  at  the  door  of  his  shop 
looking  down  the  High  Street  jocose  and  beaming,  with 
a  joke  for  the  Lord  President  and  for  the  Cadie  alike, 
hand  in  glove  with  all  the  Town  Council,  with  a  com- 
pliment for  every  fair  lady  or  smiling  lass  that  tripped  by 
under  her  tartan  screen,  delighted  with  himself  and  all 
around  him — then  retired  in  his  garden  on  the  Castle 
Hill,  though  with  all  the  variations  of  the  heavens  and 
magnificence  of  the  landscape  before  his  eyes.  He  had 
no  doubt  the  admiration  of  that  landscape  which  is  never 
wanting  to  an  Edinburgh  citizen,  a  part  of  the  creed  to 
which  he  is  born  ;  but  the  homely  limits  of  the  green 
glens  and  knowes,  the  wimpling  burn,  the  washing-green, 
the  laird's  hospitable  house  behind,  were  more  in  Allan's 
way  when  he  wanted  any  relaxation  from  the  even  more 
attractive  town.  The  High  Street  and  Habbie's  Howe 
are  the  true  centers  of  his  soul. 

It  would  be  wrong  not  to  note  the  collections  of  songs 
which  made  his  name  dear  to  all  the  pleasant  singers 
both  of  drawing-room  and  cottage.  It  is  a  strange  pe- 
culiarity in  a  nation  possessing  a  characteristic  and  me- 
lodious popular  music  of  its  own  like  Scotland,  to  find 
how  little  place  music  as  a  science,  or  even  in  its  more 
serious  developments,  has  ever  had  in  the  country. 


448  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

^Nothing  can  be  more  sweet,  more  touching,  more  tender, 
than  the  native  growth  of  Scottish  song — nothing  more 
full  of  fun  and  spirit  than  the  brilliant  dance  music  which, 
like  the  song,  seems  to  have  sprung  spontaneous  from  the 
soil.  And  no  country  has  ever  more  loved  both  songs  and 
strathspeys,  or  clung  to  them  with  greater  devotion.  It 
would  be  perhaps  impossible  for  the  most  learned  to  de- 
cide between  the  rival  claims  of  Scotland  and  Ireland  in 
respect  to  the  airs  which  seem  native  to  both  ;  but  Ire- 
land has  always  labored  under  the  disadvantage  of  being 
far  less  homogenous  than  Scotland,  and  certainly,  before 
the  time  of  Moore  at  least,  her  native  songs  did  not  be- 
long to  all  classes  as  in  the  sister  country.  And  Scotland 
has  always  through  all  ages  (previous  to  the  present  age) 
preferred  her  own  songs  to  every  other.  During  the 
eighteenth  century,  when  Edinburgh  was  almost  more 
completely  the  center  of  society  than  ever  before,  the  old 
tunes  were  sung  by  ladies  as  much  as  by  maid-servants, 
and  the  delicate  old  spinets  performed  a  soft  accompani- 
ment to  ballads  of  the  "  Ewebuchting  "  and  of  the  "  Corn 
Rigs,"  and  prolonged  the  pathetic  notes  of  "Waly,  waly" 
and  the  trembling  wail  of  the  "Flowers  of  the  Forest" 
in  the  finest  houses  as  in  the  humblest.  Music,  more 
properly  so  called,  the  art  which  has  gradually  made  its 
way  from  being  a  modest  handmaiden  of  poetry  to  full 
rivalship,  if  not  a  half -implied  superiority,  was  already  a 
scientific  pursuit  in  England  ;  and  though  the  Italian 
opera  aroused  a  violent  opposition,  and  Tweedledum  and 
Tweedledee  called  forth  the  gibes  of  the  wits,  there  ex- 
isted a  vigorous  English  school  of  learned  musicians,  and 
Handel  and  Hayden  found  an  audience  not  incapable  of 
appreciating  their  best  works.  But  while  this  develop- 
ment went  on  in  London,  Scotland  still  sang  her  ancient 
simple  melodies,  and  contemned  everything  else  with  that 
audacious  superiority  which  is  born  of  ignorance.  One 


A  BURGHER  POET.  449 

might  almost  imagine  that  this  was  the  penalty  of  a 
national  inheritance  so  ample  and  so  sweet,  and  that  the 
comparative  absence  of  traditionary  music  in  England 
opened  the  heart  of  the  country  to  strains  more  ambitious 
and  classical.  However  it  came  about,  there  is  no  deny- 
ing that  so  it  was.  If  there  was  any  Scottish  composer 
at  all,  his  productions  were  only  imitations  or  modifica- 
tions of  the  old  airs.  Music  continued  to  be  represented 
by  the  songs  of  immemorial  attraction,  the  woodnotes 
wild  of  nameless  minstrels,  pure  utterance  of  the  soil. 
Perhaps  the  absence  of  music,  except  in  the  kindred 
shape  of  psalm  tunes  which  was  but  another  form  of 
popular  song,  in  the  Church,  was  one  great  prevailing 
cause  of  the  national  insensibility  to  all  more  lavish  and 
elaborate  strains.  But  this  peculiarity  and  insensibility 
had  at  least  one  advantage — they  kept  in  constant  cultiva- 
tion a  distinct  branch  of  national  literature,  and  one 
that  is  always  attractive  and  delightful.  I  do  not  think 
it  is  too  strong  an  utterance  of  national  partiality  to  say 
that  the  songwriters  of  Scotland  are  beyond  comparison 
with  those  of  either  of  the  other  united  kingdoms.  The 
simplest  of  the  old  ditties  brought  out  of  the  ancient  poets 
contain  a  grace  of  genuine  poetry  and  real  feeling  far 
above  the  unmeaning  jingle  of  verse  which  is  the  most 
common  utterance  of  popular  song ;  and  the  cultivation 
of  this  delightful  gift  has  called  forth  the  most  tender  and 
artless  poems  from  gentle  writers  whom  nothing  but  that 
inspiration  could  have  made  to  produce  what  was  in  them. 
The  pathetic  wail  of  the  poor  lady  who  found  to  her  cost 
that 

"  Love  is  bonnie,  a  little  time  when  it  is  new," 
but  that 

"     When  love's  auld  it  waxeth  cauld, 
And  fades  away  like  morning  dew 


450  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

and  that  touching  lullaby  in  which  the  mother  hushes 
the  babe  whose 

"  Father  wrought  great  annoy," 
with  its  tender  and  simple  refrain — 

"  It  grieves  me  sore  to  hear  thee  weep," 

breathe  out  of  the  ancient  depths  of  human  trouble  with 
a  reserve  and  simplicity  of  feeling  that  seem  almost  per- 
sonal. But  the  kindred  inspiration  which  called  forth 
the  two  versions  of  the  "  Flowers  of  the  Forest  "  and  the 
ballad  of  "  Auld  Robin  Gray,"  along  with  many  more, 
shows  how  warm  was  the  impulse  to  this  expression  of 
feelings,  which  were  at  once  intensified  and  drawn  out  of 
the  sphere  of  revelations  too  individual  by  the  breath  of 
the  melody  which  carried  them  forth. 

Allan  Ramsay  has  the  merit  of  being  the  first  collector 
of  Scottish  song.  He  was  remorseless,  like  his  century, 
and  made  the  wildest  havoc  with  some  of  his  originals, 
cutting  and  slashing  as  suited  his  fancy,  and  adding  of 
his  own  whenever  it  pleased  him  so  to  do.  But  with  the 
exception  of  a  number  of  Strephons  and  Chloes,  not 
always  ungraceful,  in  the  newer  fashion,  and  a  sprinkling 
of  ruder  verses  in  which  there  is  more  indecency  than 
immorality,  the  first  two  volumes  of  the  Tea-table  Miscel- 
lany are  full  of  merit,  and  include  many  delightful  simple 
lyrics,  songs  which  compare  most  advantageously  with 
the  insipid  "words  "  which  at  this  present  advanced  age 
are  used  as  a  sort  of  necessary  evil  to  serve  the  purpose 
of  the  music.  "  Say  that  our  way  is  only  an  harmonious 
speaking  of  many  witty  or  soft  thoughts  after  the  poet 
has  dressed  them  in  four  or  five  stanzas,"  says  Ramsay, 
with  the  apology  which  is  a  veiled  assertion  of  higher 
aims,  "  yet  undoubtedly  these  must  relish  best  with  people 
who  have  not  bestowed  much  of  their  time  in  acquiring 


ALLAN  RAMSAY'S  MONUMENT.— Page  451. 

Royal  Edinburgh, 


A  BURGHER  POET.  451 

a  taste  for  that  downright  perfect  music  which  requires 
none  or  very  little  of  the  poet's  assistance/'  And  he  tells 
us  in  the  same  preface  of  a  letter  he  has  had  from  America 
informing  him  that  there  too  his  manual  of  song  has  gone, 
and  that  his 

"  Soft  verse  made  to  a  Scottisli  air  * 

Is  often  sung  by  our  Virginian  fair." 

The  book  is  dedicated  to  the  ladies — the  Donne  qui 
hanno  intelletto  d'amore,  long  supposed  to  be  the  final 
critics  and  judges  of  such  production  :  and  is  confidently 
recommended  to  these  "  fair  singers  "  for  whose  "  modest 
eyes  and  ears,  according  to  the  poet  (but  with  notable  ex- 
ceptions, as  has  been  said),  they  were  prepared.  The 
third  volume  consisted  almost  exclusively  of  English 
songs,  among  which  are  many  classic  verses.  If  it  were 
but  as  a  stepping-stone  to  those  perfect  lyrics,  so  full  of 
natural  truth  and  feeling,  with  which  Burns  afterwards 
brought  to  a  climax  the  songs  of  his  country,  the  Tea-table 
Miscellany  Avould  have  a  merit  of  its  own. 

Eamsay  died  in  1758,  when  the  troubles  of  the  country 
were  over,  the  last  seeds  of  insurrection  stamped  out,  and 
the  powerful  revolution  begun  which  made  the  clans  loyal 
to  Government  and  Scotch  politicians  faithful  to  the 
Union.  He  was  buried  in  the  Greyfriars  Churchyard, 
where  so  many  of  the  most  notable  of  the  citizens  of  Edin- 
burgh were  laid.  A  hundred  years  or  so  after,  the  en- 
lightened community  placed  his  statue  in  the  gardens 
that  lie  between  the  old  town  and  the  new.  And  thus 
the  poet's  career  was  run ;  it  was  a  prosperous  one,  full 
of  the  success  that  was  most  sweet  to  him  ;  comfort  and 
competence  and  reputation,  at  once  that  of  a  warm  and 
well-to-do  citizen  and  that  of  a  poet.  Few  poets  have 
lived  to  see  their  productions  so  popular.  The  Gentle 
Shepherd  may  be  said  to  have  been  in  every  cottage  in 


452  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

Scotland  in  its  author's  lifetime,  and  his  songs  were  sung 
by  -everybody.  Nor  did  this  fame  interfere  with  the 
citizen's  well-earned  and  more  substantial  reward.  The 
shop  in  which  he  began  his  prosperous  career,  and  which 
was  crowded  so  continually  by  eager  messengers  with 
their  pennies  in  search  of  Allan  Ramsay's  last  new  piece 
— the  most  immediate  and  one  of  the  most  pleasant  evi- 
dences of  success — still  exists,  with  its  high  steps  and 
broad  low  windows,  in  the  heart  of  the  old  town  with 
which  his  name  is  so  completely  associated  ;  and  the 
quaint  square  house  in  which  his  later  days  of  ease  and 
retirement  were  spent  still  keeps  its  place  on  the  east  of 
the  Castle  Hill,  surveying  from  its  windows  the  enriched 
and  amplified  yet  unalterable  panorama  so  dear  and 
beautiful  to  all  Scottish  eyes. 


CHAPTER    II. 

THE   GUEST   OF  EDINBURGH. 

ROYAL  Edinburgh,  the  city  of  the  Scots  kings  and  Par- 
liament, the  capital  of  the  ancient  kingdom,  would  seem 
to  have  become  weary  somewhere  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury of  dwelling  alone  upon  her  rock.  There  were,  to  be 
sure,  reasons  more  prosaic  for  the  construction  of  the  New 
Town,  the  partner  and  companion  of  the  old  historical 
city.  The  population  had  increased,  the  desire  for  com- 
fort and  space,  and  many  luxuries  unknown  to  the  early 
citizens  of  Edinburgh,  had  developed  among  the  new. 
It  was  no  longer  agreeable  to  the  lawyers  and  philosophers 
to  be  crowded  up  with  the  other  inhabitants  of  a  common 
stair,  to  have  the  din  of  street  cries  and  commotion  ever 
in  their  ears,  and  the  lowest  of  the  population  always 
about  their  feet,  as  was  inevitable  when  gentle  and  simple 
were  piled  together  in  the  High  Street  and  Canongate. 
The  old  houses  might  be  noble  houses  when  they  were 
finally  got  at,  through  many  drawbacks  and  abominations 
— though  in  those  days  there  was  little  appreciation  even 
of  the  stately  beauty  of  old  masonry  and  ornament — but 
their  surroundings  became  daily  more  and  more  intoler- 
able. And  it  was  an  anchronism  to  coop  up  a  learned, 
clecrnnt,  and  refined  class,  living  under  the  Hanoverian 

c  O 

Georges  in  peace  and  loyalty,  within  the  circle  of  walls 
now  broken  down  and  useless,  which  had  been  adapted  to 
protect  the  subjects  of  the  old  Scottish  Jameses  from  con- 
tinual attacks. 

453 


ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

Happily  the  nature  of  the  situation  prevented  any  amal- 
gamation or  loss  of  the  old  boundaries  and  picturesque 
features  of  the  ancient  city,  in  the  new.  There  was  no 
question  of  continuation  or  enlargement.  Another  Edin- 
burgh rose  at  the  feet  of  the  first,  a  sober,  respectable, 
modern,  and  square-toed  town,  with  wide  streets  and 
buildings  solid  and  strong,  not  without  pretensions  to  a 
certain  stateliness  of  size  and  design,  but  in  strong  con- 
trast with  the  architecture  and  fashion  native  to  the  soil — 
the  high  gables  and  turreted  stairs  of  the  past.  The  old 
town  had  to  throw  a  drawbridge,  permanent  and  massive, 
over  the  hollow  at  her  feet  before  she  could  even  reach  the 
terraced  valley  on  which  the  first  lines  of  habitation  were 
drawn,  and  which,  rounding  over  its  steep  slope,  de- 
scended towards  another  and  yet  another  terrace  before 
it  stood  complete,  a  new-born  partner  and  companion  in 
life  of  the  former  capital,  lavish  in  space  as  the  other  was 
confined,  leisurely  and  serious  as  the  other  was  animated 
— a  new  town  of  great  houses,  of  big  churches — dull,  as 
only  the  eighteenth  century  was  capable  of  making  them 
— of  comfort  and  sober  wealth  and  intellectual  progress. 
The  architects  who  adorned  the  Modern  Athens  with 
Roman  domes  and  Greek  temples,  and  placid  fictitious 
ruins  on  the  breezy  hill  which  possessed  a  fatal  likeness 
to  the  Acropolis,  would  have  scoffed  at  the  idea  of  finding 
models  in  the  erections  of  the  fourteenth  century — that 
so-called  dark  age — or  recognizing  a  superior  harmony  and 
fitness  in  native  principles  of  construction. 

Yet  though  the  public  taste  has  now  returned  more  or 
less-intelligently  to  the  earlier  canons,  it  would  be  foolish 
not  to  recognize  that  there  is  a  certain  advantage  even  in 
the  difference  of  the  new  town  from  the  old.  It  is  not 
the  historical  Edinburgh,  the  fierce,  tumultuous,  medi- 
eval city,  the  stern  but  not  more  quiet  capital  of  the  Re- 
formers,, the  noisy,  dirty,  whimsical,  mirth-loving  town, 


THE  GUEST  OF  EDINBURGH.  455 

full  of  broad  jest  and  witty  epigram,  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  The  new  town  has  a  character  of  its  own.  It 
is  the  modern,  not  supplanting  or  effacing,  but  standing 
by  the  old.  Those  who  built  it  considered  it  an  extraor- 
dinary improvement  upon  all  that  Gothic  antiquity  had 
framed.  They  were  far  more  proud  of  these  broad  streets 
and  massive  houses  than  of  anything  their  fathers  had 
left  to  them,  and  flung  down  without  remorse  a  great  deal 
of  the  antiquated  building  after  Avhich  it  is  now  the 
fashion  to  inquire  with  so  much  regret.  Notwithstanding 
the  change  of  taste  since  that  time,  the  New  Town  of 
Edinburgh  still  regards  the  old  with  a  little  condescension 
and  patronage  ;  but  there  is  no  opposition  between  the 
two.  They  stand  by  each  other  in  a  curious  peacefulness 
of  union,  each  with  a  certain  independence  yet  mutual 
reliance.  London  and  Paris  have  rubbed  off  all  their  old 
angles  and  made  themselves,  notwithstanding  the  ex- 
istence of  Gothic  corners  here  and  there,  all  modern,  to 
the  extinction  of  most  of  the  characteristic  features  of 
their  former  living.  But  happy  peculiarities  of  situation 
have  saved  our  northern  capital  from  any  such  self-oblit- 
eration. Edinburgh  has  been  fortunate  enough  to  pre- 
serve both  sides — the  ancient  picturesque  grace,  the 
modern  comfort  and  ease.  And  though  Mr.  Euskin  has 
spoken  very  severely  of  the  new  town,  we  will  not  throw 
a  stone  at  a  place  so  well  adapted  to  the  necessities  of 
modern  life.  Those  bland  fronts  of  polished  stone  would 
have  been  more  kindly  and  more  congenial  to  the  soil  had 
they  cut  the  air  with  high-stepped  gables  and  encased 
their  stairs  in  the  rounded  turrets  which  give  a  simple 
distinctive  character  to  so  many  Scottish  houses  ;  and  a 
little  color,  whether  of  the  brick  which  Scotch  builders 
despise  or  the  delightful  washes  '  which  their  forefathers 

1  In  this  respect  I  venture  to  think  all  Scotland  errs.     Many 
houses  throughout  the  country,  built  roughly  with  a  rude  and 


456  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

loved,  would  be  a  godsend  even  now.  But  still,  for  a 
sober  domestic  partner,  the  new  town  is  no  ill  companion 
to  the  ancient  city  on  the  hill. 

This  adjunct  to  the  elder  Edinburgh  had  come  into 
being  between  the  time  when  Allan  Ramsay's  career  ended 
in  the  octagon  house  on  the  Castle  Hill,  and  another  poet, 
very  different  from  Ramsay,  appeared  in  the  Scotch  capi- 
tal. In  the  meantime  many  persons  of  note  had  left  the 
old  town  and  migrated  towards  the  new.  The  old  gentry 
of  whom  so  many  stories  have  been  told,  especially  those 
old  ladies  who  held  a  little  court,  like  Mrs.  Bethune 
Balliol,  or  made  their  bold  criticism  of  all  tilings  both 
now  and  old,  like  those  who  flourish  in  Lord  Cockburn's 
lively  pages — continued  to  live  in  the  ancestral  houses, 
which  still  kept  their  old-fashioned  perfection  within, 
though  they  had  to  be  approached  through  all  the  squalor 
and  misery  which  had  already  found  refuge  outside  in  the 
desecrated  Canongate  ;  but  society  in  the  Scotch  metropolis 
was  now  rapidly  tending  across  the  lately  erected  bridge 
towards  the  new  great  houses  which  contemplated  old 
Edinburgh  across  the  little  valley,  where  the  Nor'  Loch 
glimmered  no  longer  and  where  fields  lay  green  where 
marsh  and  water  had  been.  The  Xorth  Bridge  was  a 
noble  structure,  and  the  newly-built  Register  House  at 
the  other  end  one  of  the  finest  buildings  of  modern  times 
to  the  admiring  chroniclers  of  Edinburgh.  And  the  his- 
torians and  philosophers,  the  great  doctors,  the  great 
lawyers,  the  elegant  critics,  for  whom  it  was  more  and 

irregular  but  solid  mason-work,  were  made  points  of  light  in  the 
landscape  by  these  washes  of  color  which  poor  dwellings  retain. 
There  is  a  yellow  which  I  remember  on  many  old  houses  in  which 
the  stains  of  time  and  woather  produced  varieties  of  tone  almost 
as  agreeable  as  the  mellowing  of  marble  under  the  same  influ- 
ences, which  are  now  stripped  into  native  roughness  and  rise  in 
somber  gray,  sometimes  almost  black,  abstracting  a  much-needed 
warmth  from  the  aspect  of  the  country  round. 


THE  GUEST  OF  EDINBURGH.  457 

more  necessary  that  the  ways  of  access  between  the  old 
to\vn  and  the  new  might  be  made  more  easy,  presided 
over  and  criticised  all  those  wonderful  new  buildings  of 
classic  style  and  unbroken  regularity,  and  watched  the 
progress  of  the  Earthen  Mound,  a  bold  and  picturesque 
expedient  which  filled  up  the  hollow  and  made  a  winding 
walk  between,  with  interest  as  warm  as  that  which  they 
took  in  the  lectures  and  students,  the  books  and  re- 
searches, which  were  making  their  city  one  of  the  in- 
tellectual centers  of  the  world. 

This  is  a  position  to  which  Scotland  has  always  aspired, 
and  the  pride  of  the  ambitious  city  and  country  was  never 
more  fully  satisfied  than  in  the  end  of  last  and  the  be- 
ginning of  the  present  century.  Edinburgh  had  never 
been  so  rich  in  the  literary  element,  and  the  band  of 
young  men  full  of  genius  and  high  spirit  who  were  to 
advance  her  still  one  step  farther  to  the  climax  of  fame 
in  that  particular,  were  growing  up  to  take  the  places  of 
their -fathers.  A  place  in  which  Walter  Scott  was  just 
emerging  from  his  delightful  childhood,  in  which  Jeffrey 
was  a  mischievous  boy  and  Henry  Brougham  a  child, 
could  not  but  be  overflowing  with  hope,  especially  when 
we  remember  all  the  good  company  there  already — Du- 
gald  Stewart,  bringing  so  many  fine  young  gentlemen 
from  England  to  wonder  at  the  little  Scotch  capital,  and 
a  crowd  of  Erskines,  Hunters,  Gregories,  Monroes,  and 
Dr.  Blair  and  Dr.  Blacklock,  and  the  Man  of  Feeling — 
not  to  speak  of  those  wild  and  witty  old  ladies  in  the  Can- 
ongate,  and  the  duchesses  who  still  recognized  the  claims 
of  Edinburgh  in  its  season.  To  all  this  excellent  com- 
pany, whose  fame  and  whose  talk  hung  about  both  the  old 
Edinburgh  and  the  new  like  the  smoke  over  their  roofs, 
there  arrived  one  spring  day  a  wonderful  visitor,  in  ap- 
pearance like  nothing  so  much  as  an  honest  hill  farmer, 
traveling  on  foot,  his  robust  shoulders  a  little  bowed  with 


458  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

the  habit  of  the  plough,  his  eyes  shining,  as  no  other  eyes 
in  Scotland  shone,  with  youth  and  genius  and  hope. 
He  knew  nobody  in  Edinburgh  save  an  Ayrshire  lad  like 
himself,  like  what  everybody  up  to  this  time  had  sup- 
posed Eobert  Burns  to  be.  The  difference  was  that  the 
stranger  a  little  while  before  had  put  forth  by  the  aid  of 
a  country  printer  at  Kilmarnock  a  little  volume  of  rustic 
poetry  upon  the  most  unambitious  subjects,  in  Westland 
Scotch,  the  record  of  a  ploughman's  loves  and  frolics  and 
thoughts.  It  is  something  to  know  that  these  credentials 
were  enough  to  rouse  the  whole  of  that  witty,  learned, 
clever,  and  all-discerning  community,  and  that  this  visitor 
from  the  hills  and  fields  in  a  moment  found  every  door 
opened  to  him,  and  Modern  Athens,  never  unconscious  of 
its  own  superiority  and  at  this  moment  more  deeply  aware 
than  usual  that  it  was  one  of  the  lights  of  the  earth,  at 
his  feet. 

Burns  was  but  a  visitor,  the  lion  of  a  season,  and  there- 
fore we  are  not  called  upon  to  associate  with  Edinburgh 
the  whole  tragic  story  of  his  life.  And  yet  his  appearance 
was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  that  has  distinguished 
the  ancient  town.  He  arrived  among  all  the  professors, 
the  men  of  letters,  the  cultured  classes  who  held  an 
almost  ideal  pre-eminence,  more  like  what  a  young  author 
hopes  than  is  generally  to  be  met  with  among  men — his 
heart  beating  with  a  sense  of  the  great  venture  on  which 
lie  was  bound,  and  a  proud  determination  to  quit  himself 
like  a  man  whatever  were  the  magnitudes  among  which  he 
should  have  to  stand.  Mere  Society  so  called,  with  all 
its  bustle  of  gaiety  and  endless  occupation  about  nothing, 
might  have  exercised  upon  him  something  of  the  fascina- 
tion which  fine  names  and  fine  houses  and  the  sweep  and 
and  whirl  of  hurried  life  certainly  possess ;  but  he  who 
expresses  almost  with  bitterness  his  disgust  to  see  a 
blockhead  of  rank  received  by  one  of  his  noble  patrons 


LADY  STAIR'S  CLOSE. -Page  459. 

Royal  Edinburgh. 


THE  GUEST  OF  EDINBURGH.  459 

with  as  much,  nay  more,  consideration  than  is  given  to  him- 
self, would  probably  have  had  very  little  toleration  for  the 
butterflies  of  fashion:  whereas  Edinburgh  society  impressed 
him  greatly,  as  of  that  ideal  kind  of  which  the  young  and 
inexperienced  dream,  where  the  best  and  brightest  are 
at  the  head  of  everything,  where  poetry  is  a  passport  to 
the  innermost  sanctuary  and  conversation  is  like  the  talk 
of  the  gods.  They  were  all  distinguished  for  one  literary 
gift  or  grace  or  another,  philosophers  golden-mouthed, 
poets  of  the  most  polished  sort :  their  knowledge,  their 
culture,  their  intellectual  powers,  were  the  foundation 
upon  which  their  little  world  was  built.  The  great  people 
who  were  to  be  found  among  them  were  proud  to  know  these 
scholars  and  sages — it  was  they,  and  not  an  occasional 
family  of  rank,  or  still  more  rare  man  of  wealth,  who  gave 
character  and  meaning  to  Edinburgh.  To  be  received  in 
such  society  was  the  highest  privilege  which  a  young  poet 
could  desire  ;  and  it  was  worthy  to  receive  and  foster  and 
encourage  that  new  light  that  came  from  heaven. 

On  their  side  the  heads  of  society  in  Edinburgh  were 
much  interested  in  this  young  man.  There  had  been  an 
article  in  the  Lounger,  fondly  deemed  a  Scotch  Spectator, 
an  elegant  literary  paper  widely  read  not  only  in  Scotland 
but  even  beyond  the  Border,  upon  him  and  his  works. 
"  The  Ayrshire  Ploughman  "  was  the  title  of  the  article, 
and  it  set  forth  all  the  imperfections  of  his  breeding,  his 
want  of  education,  his  ignorance  both  of  books  and  of  the 
world,  and  yet  the  amazing  verses  he  had  produced, 
which,  though  disguised  in  a  dialect  supposed  to  be  un- 
known to  the  elegant  reader,  and  for  which  Henry  Mac- 
kenzie, the  Man  of  Feeling,  supplied  a  glossary — living, 
he  himself,  in  an  old-fashioned  house  in  the  South  Back 
of  the  Canongate  and  within  the  easiest  reach  of  those 
wonderful  old  ladies  who  spoke  broad  Scotch,  and  left  no 
one  in  any  doubt  as  to  the  strong  opinions  expressed 


460  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

therein — were  certified  to  be  worthy  the  perusal  of  the 
most  fastidious  critic.  Lord  Monboddo,  who  was  the 
author  of  speculations  which  forestalled  Darwin  and  who 
considered  a  tail  to  be  an  appendage  of  which  men  had 
not  long  got  rid,  on  the  one  side,  and  the  metaphysicians 
and  philosophers  on  the  other,  would  no  doubt  prick  up 
their  ears  to  hear  of  this  absolutely  new  being  in  whom 
there  might  be  seen  some  traces  of  primeval  man.  We 
forget  which  of  the  early  Jameses  it  was  who  is  said  to 
have  shut  up  two  infants  with  a  dumb  nurse  in  one  of  the 
islands  of  the  Firth  to  ascertain  what  kind  of  language 
they  would  speak  when  thus  left  to  the  teaching  of  nature. 
The  experiment  was  triumphantly  successful,  for  the 
heaven-taught  babies  babbled,  the  chroniclers  tell  us,  a 
kind  of  Hebrew,  thus  proving  beyond  doubt  that  the  lan- 
guage of  the  Old  Testament  was  the  original  tongue  of 
man.  The  Edinburgh  savants  must  have  received  Burns 
with  something  of  the  same  feeling  :  for  here  was  a  new 
soul  which  had  been  shut  up  amid  the  primeval  elements, 
and  the  language  it  spoke  was  Poetry  !  yet  poetry  dis- 
guised in  imperfect  dialect  which  might  yet  be  trained 
and  educated  into  elegance.  They  asked  him  to  dinner 
as  a  first  step,  and  gathered  round  him  to  hear  what  he 
would  have  to  say  ;  to  observe  the  effect  produced  by  the 
sight  of  learning,  criticism,  knowledge  ;  to  enjoy  his  awe, 
and  note  the  improvement  that  could  not  but  ensue. 
This  curiosity  was  full  of  kindness  ;  their  hearts  were  a 
little  touched  by  the  ploughman,  by  his  glowing  eyes, 
and  by  the  strange  sight  of  him  there  among  them  in  the 
midst  of  their  high  civilization,  a  rustic  clown  who  knew 
nothing  better  than  a  thatched  cottage  and  a  clay  floor. 
No  doubt  they  had  the  sincerest  desire  that  he  should  be 
made  to  understand  how  much  he  was  deficient,  what  a 
great  deal  he  had  to  learn,  and  be  taught  to  use  fine  lan- 
guage, and  turn  his  attention  to  higher  subjects,  and  be 


THE  GUEST  OF  EDINBURGH.  461 

altogether  elevated  and  brought  on  in  the  world.  .  The 
situation  is  very  curious  and  full  of  human  interest,  even 
had  the  stranger  been  less  in  importance  than  he  was. 
It  is  wonderfully  enlightening  in  any  circumstances  to  see 
such  an  encounter  from  both  sides,  to  perceive  the  light 
in  which  it  appears  to  them,  and  the  very  different  light 
in  which  it  is  seen  by  Mm.  There  was  the  usual  great 
divergence  between  the  views  of  the  visitor  and  the  highly- 
cultured  community  to  which  he  came.  For  he  indeed 
did  not  come  there  at  all  to  be  enlightened  and  trained 
and  put  in  the  way  he  should  go.  He  came  full  of  de- 
lightful hope  that  he  was  coming  among  his  own  kind, 
that  he  was  for  the  first  time  to  meet  his  own  species,  and 
recognize  in  other  human  faces  the  light  that  shone  about 
his  own  path,  but  in  none  of  the  other  muddy  ways  of  the 
country-side  ;  to  make  friends  with  his  natural  brethren, 
and  be  understood  of  them  as  no  one  yet  had  been  found 
to  understand  him.  In  his  high  anticipations,  in  his  warm 
enthusiasm  of  hope,  he  himself  figured  dimly  as  a  sort  of 
noble  exile  coming  back  to  his  father's  house.  So  does 
every  child  of  fancy  regard  the  world  of  which  he  knows 
nothing,  the  world  of  the  great  and  famous,  where  to 
dazzled  fancy  all  the  beautiful  things,  words,  and  thoughts 
for  which  he  has  been  sighing  all  his  life  are  to  be  found. 
They  met,  and  they  were,  if  not  mutually  disappointed, 
yet  strangely  astonished  and  perplexed.  Burns  would 
seem  to  have  been  always  on  his  guard,  too  much  on  his 
guard  we  should  be  disposed  to  say,  suspicious  of  the  in- 
tention to  guide,  to  chasten,  to  educate  and  refine,  which 
was  indeed  in  the  kindest  way  at  the  bottom  of  everybody's 
thoughts.  He  was  determined  to  be  astonished  by  noth- 
ing, to  keep  his  head  so  that  no  one  should  ever  be  able 
to  say  that  it  was  turned  by  his  new  experiences — an  at- 
titude which  altogether  bewildered  the  good  people,  who 
were  willing  to  give  him  every  kind  of  education,  to  excuse 


462  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

any  rudeness  or  roughness  or  imperfection,  but  not  to  see 
a  man  at  his  ease,  appearing  among  them  as  if  he  were  of 
them,  requiring  no  allowance  to  be  made  for  him,  holding 
his  head  high  as  any  man  he  met.  All  the  accounts  we 
have  of  his  appearance  in  Edinburgh  agree  in  this. 
He  was  neither  abashed  nor  embarrassed  ;  no  rustic 
presumption  or  vulgarity,  but  quite  as  little  any  timid- 
i"y  or  awkwardness,  was  in  the  Ayrshire  ploughman. 
His  shoulders  a  little  bent  with  the  work  to  which  he  had 
been  accustomed,  his  dress  like  a  countryman,  a  rougher 
cloth  perhaps,  a  pair  of  good  woolen  stockings  rig  and 
fur,  his  mother's  knitting,  instead  of  the  silk  which 
covered  limbs  probably  not  half  so  robust — but  so  far  as 
manners  went,  nothing  to  apologize  for  or  smile  at.  The 
accounts  all  agree  in  this.  If  he  never  put  himself  for- 
ward too  much,  he  never  withdrew  with  any  unworthy 
shyness  from  his  modest  share  in  the  conversation.  Some- 
times he  would  be  roused  to  eloquent  speech,  and  then 
the  admiring  ladies  said  he  carried  them  "off  their  feet" 
in  the  contagion  of  his  enthusiasm  and  emotion.  But 
this  was  a  very  strange  phenomenon  for  the  Edinburgh 
professors  and  men  of  letters  to  deal  with  :  a  novice  who 
had  not  come  humbly  to  be  taught,  but  one  who  had  come 
to  take  up  his  share  of  the  inheritance,  to  sit  down  among 
the  great,  as  in  his  natural  place.  He  was  not  perhaps 
altogether  unmoved  by  their  insane  advices  to  him,  one 
of  the  greatest  of  lyrical  poets,  a  singer  above  all — to 
write  a  tragedy,  to  give  up  the  language  he  knew  and 
write  his  poetry  in  the  high  English  which,  alas  !  he  uses 
in  his  letters.  Not  unmoved,  and  seriously  inclining  to 
a  more  lofty  measure,  he  compounded  addresses  to  Edin- 
burgh : 

"  Edinci,  Scotia's  darling  seat ! " 

and  other  such  intolerable  effusions.  One  can  imagine 
him  roaming  through  the  fields  between  the  old  town  and 


DUGALD  STE\V ART'S  MOITUr-IE    T . -Pag- •  463. 


THE  ,GUEST  OF  EDINBURGH.  463 

the  new,  and  looking  tip  to  the  "  rude  rough  fortress," 
and  on  the  other  side  to  the  brand-new  regular  lines  of 
building,  where 

"  Architecture's  noble  pride 

Bids  elegance  and  splendor  rise," 

and  musing  in  his  mind  how  to  celebrate  them  in  polished 
verse  so  that  even  the  critics  may  be  satisfied — 

"Thy  sons,  Edina  !  social,  kind, 

With  open  arms  the  stranger  hail ;     , 
Their  views  enlarged,  their  liberal  mind, 

Above  the  narrow,  rural  vale  ; 
Attentive  still  to  sorrow's  wail, 

Or  modest  merit's  silent  claim  ; 
And  never  may  their  sources  fail ! 

And  never  envy  blot  their  name  ! " 

One  wonders  what  the  gentlemen  said  to  this  in  the 
old  town  and  the  new — whether  it  did  not  confuse  them 
still  further,  as  well  intended  perhaps,  but  not  after  all 
like  the  "  Epistle  to  Davie,"  though  they  had  all  ad- 
vised him  to  amend  that  rustic  style.  A  very  confusing 
business  altogether — difficult  for  the  kind  advisers  as  well 
as  for  the  poet,  and  with  no  outlet  that  any  one  could  see. 

We  have,  however,  a  more  agreeable  picture  of  the 
visitor  on  another  occasion  when  he  walked  out  into  the 
country  with  Dugald  Stewart  in  a  spring  morning  to  the 
hills  of  Braid  and  talked  that  gentle  philosopher's  heart 
away,  not  now  about  Edina's  palaces  and  towers.  "  He 
told  me  .  .  .  that  the  sight  of  so  many  smoking  cottages 
gave  a  pleasure  to  his  mind  which  none  could  understand 
who  had  not  witnessed  like  himself  the  happiness  and 
worth  which  they  contained."  It  is  more  pleasant  to 
think  of  the  poet's  dark  eyes  lighting  up  as  he  said  this 
than  to  watch  him  proud  and  self-possessed  in  the  draw- 
ing-rooms holding  his  own,  taking  such  good  care  that 


464  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

nobody  should  divine  how  his  heart  was  beating  and  his 
nerves  athrill. 

But  after  all  there  is  no  such  account  given  of  this 
wonderful  visitor  to.  Edinburgh  as  that  we  have  from  the 
after-recollections  of  a  certain  "  lameter  "  boy  who  was 
once  present  in  a  house  where  Burns  was  a  guest.  The 
Scott  boys  from  George  Square  had  been  admitted  to  the 
party  which  they  were  too  young  to  join  in  an  ordinary 
way,  in  order  that  they  might  see  this  wonder  of  the 
world,  the  pl,ougbman-poet  who  was  not  afraid,  but  be- 
haved as  well  as  any  of  the  gentlemen.  And  it  befell  by 
the  happiest  chance  that  Burns  inquired  who  was  the 
author  of  certain  verses  inscribed  upon  a  print  which  he 
had  been  looking  at.  No  one  knew  but  young  Walter, 
who  we  may  be  sure  had  not  lost  a  look  or  a  word  of  the 
stranger,  and  who  had  read  everything  in  his  invalid 
childhood.  The  boy  was  not  bold  enough  to  answer  the 
question  loud  out,  but  he  whispered  it  to  some  older 
friend,  who  told  the  poet,  no  doubt  with  an  indication  of 
the  blushing  and  eager  lad  from  whom  it  came,  which 
procured  him  a  word  and  a  look  never  forgotten.  But 
there  passed  at  the  same  time  a  thought  through  young 
Walter's  mind,  the  swift  reflection  of  that  never  failing 
criticism  of  youth  which  pierces  unaware  through  all 
wrappings  and  veils  of  the  soul.  "I  remember  I  thought 
Burns's  acquaintance  with  English  poetry  was  rather  lim- 
ited ;  and  also  that  having  twenty  times  the  ability  of 
Allan  Eamsay  and  of  Fergusson,  he  talked  of  them  with 
too  much  humility  as  his  models."  The  much-read  boy 
was  a  little  shocked,  no  doubt  disturbed  in  his  secret  soul 
that  the  poet — so  far  above  any  other  poet  that  was  to 
be  seen  about  the  world  in  those  days — should  not  have 
known  that  verse  :  though  indeed  men  better  read  than 
Burns  might  have  been  excused  for  their  want  of  ac- 
quaintance with  a  minor  poet  like  Langhorn ;  but  how 


THE  GUEST  OF  EDINBURGH.  465 

true  was  the  indignant  observation,  half  angry,  that  with 
"  twenty  times  the  ability  "  it  was  Allan  Eamsay  and  the 
still  less  important  unfortunate  young  Fergusson  to  whom 
Burns  looked  up  !  Did  the  boy  wonder  perhaps,  though 
too  loyal  to  say  it — for  criticism  at  his  age  is  always  keen 
— whether  there  might  be  a  something  not  quite  real  in 
that  devotion,  and  ask  in  the  recesses  of  his  mind  whether 
it  was  possible  for  such  a  man  to  be  so  self-deceived  ? 

There  were  no  doubt  various  affectations  about  Burns, 
as  when  he  talks  big  in  his  diary  of  observing  character 
and  finding  this  pursuit  the  greatest  entertainment  of  his 
life  in  Edinburgh,  with  a  pretension  very  general  among 
half-educated  persons  :  but  there  is  no  reason  to  believe 
that  he  was  not  quite  genuine  about  his  predecessors.  A 
poet  is  not  necessarily  a  critic  ;  and  Allan  Ramsay's  fame 
had  been  exactly  of  the  popular  kind  which  would  at- 
tract a  son  of  the  soil,  whereas  Fergusson  was  the  object 
of  Burns's  especial  tenderness,  pity,  and  regard.  And  it 
is  touching  to  recollect  that  the  only  sign  he  left  of  him- 
self in  Edinburgh,  where  for  the  first  time  he  learned 
what  it  was  to  mix  in  fine  company  and  to  feel  the  free- 
dom of  money  in  his  pocket,  from  which  he  could  afford 
a  luxury,  was  to  place  a  stone  over  the  grave  of  Fergus- 
son  in  the  Canongate  Churchyard,  where  he  lay  unknown. 
His  application  to  the  Kirk-Session  for  leave  to  do  this 
is  still  kept  upon  the  books — a  curious  interruption  amid 
the  minutes  of  church  discipline  and  economics.  One 
wonders  if  that  homely  memorial  is  kept  as  it  ought  to 
be.  It  is  a  memorial  not  only  of  the  admiration  of  one 
poet  for  another,  but  of  Burns's  poignant  pity — a  well- 
nigh  intolerable  pang — for  a  young  soul  who  preceded 
himself  in  the  way  of  poetry  and  despair,  one  whose  life, 
destined  to  better  and  brighter  things,  had  been  flung 
away  like  a  weed  on  the  dismal  strand.  Only  twenty- 
three  years  of  poetry  and  folly  had  sufficed  that  other 
30 


466  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

reckless  boy  to  destroy  himself  and  shatter  his  little 
lamp  of  light.  Burns  was  only  a  few  years  older,  and 
perhaps,  though  on  the  heights  of  triumph,  felt  some- 
thing of  that  horrible  tide  already  catching  his  own  feet 
to  sweep  him  too  into  the  abyss.  There  are  few  things 
in  the  world  more  pathetic  than  this  tribute  of  his  to  the 
victim  who  had  gone  before  him. 

I  may  perhaps  venture  to  say,  with  an  apology  for  re- 
curring to  a  subject  dealt  with  in  another  book,  that 
this  poetic  visit  to  Edinburgh  reminds  me  of  the  visit  of 
another  poet  in  every  way  very  different  from  Burns  to 
another  city  which  cannot  be  supposed  to  resemble  Edin- 
burgh except  in  the  wonderful  charm  and  attraction  for 
devotees  which  she  possesses.  There  is  indeed  no  just 
comparison  between  Petrarch  at  Venice  and  Burns  at 
Edinburgh,  nothing  but  the  fantastic  link,  often  too 
subtle  to  be  traced,  which  makes  the  mind  glide  or  leap 
over  innumerable  distances  and  diversities  from  one  thing 
to  another.  The  Italian  poet  came  conferring  glory, 
great  as  a  prince,  and  attended  by  much  the  same  hon- 
ors and  privileges,  though  he  was  but  a  half  priest,  the 
son  of  an  exile,  in  an  age  and  place  where  birth  and  fam- 
ily were  of  infinitely  more  importance  than  they  are  now. 
He  was  the  perfection  and  flower  of  learning  and  high 
culture,  and  a  fame  which  had  reached  the  point  which 
is  high-fantastical,  and  can  mount  no  farther — and  he 
came  to  a  palace  allotted  to  him  by  the  Government,  and 
every  distinction  which  it  was  in  their  power  to  bestow, 
and  demeaned  himself  en  lion  prince,  adorning  with  skil- 
ful eloquent  touches  of  description  the  glorious  scene 
beneath  his  windows,  the  pageants  at  which  he  was  an 
honored  spectator.  Nothing  could  be  more  unlike  the 
young,  shy,  proud,  yet  'genial-hearted  rustic,  holding 
firmly  by  that  magic  wand  of  poetry  which  was  his  sole 
right  to  consideration,  and  facing  the  curious,  puzzled, 


THE  GUEST  OF  EDINBURGH.  467 

patronizing  world  with  a  certain  suspicion,  a  certain  de- 
fiance, as  of  one  whom  no  craft  or  wile  could  betray  or 
pretension  daunt — yet  ready  to  melt  into  an  enthusiasm 
almost  extravagant  when  a  lovely  young  woman  or  a 
noble  youth  pushed  open  with  a  touch  the  door  always 
ajar,  or  at  least  unfastened,  of  his  heart. 

"  The  mother  may  forget  the  child 

That  smiles  sae  sweetly  on  her  knee ; 
But  I'll  remember  thee,  Glencairn, 
And  a'  that  thou  hast  done  for  m   1 " 

"What  Glencairn  had  done  was  nothing  but  kindness,  a 
warm  reception  which  not  even  the  poet's  susceptibility 
could  think  condescending  :  but  he  is  repaid  with  an  exu- 
berant, extragavant  gratitude.  Such  was  the  man  ;  ever 
afraid  to  compromise  his  dignity,  but  with  no  measure  for 
the  overflowings  of  his  heart.  Petrarch,  so  much  more 
assured  in  his  eminence  and  superiority  to  all  living  poets, 
was  driven  from  his  palace  on  the  Riva  and  all  his  delights 
by  the  impertinent  gibes  of  some  foolish  young  men.  But 
Burns  was  flattered  and  caressed  to  the  top  of  his  bent, 
and — forgotten,  or  at  least  dropped,  and  no  more  thought 
of.  He  returned  to  Edinburgh  only  to  find  that,  the 
gloss  of  novelty  having  worn  off,  his  friends  were  no 
longer  ready  to  move  heaven  and  earth  in  order  to  bring 
him  to  their  parties,  though  probably  had  he  chosen  he 
might  have  worked  himself  back  "  into  society "  in  a 
slower  but  more  permanent  fashion.  This,  however,  he 
did  not  choose,  but  fell  back  among  the  convivial  middle 
class,  the  undistinguished  and  over  merry,  where  nobody 
thought  it  too  great  humility  to  refer  to  Allan  Ramsay 
and  Fergusson  as  his  models.  It  must  be  recollected, 
however,  that  his  second  visit  to  Edinburgh,  and  what 
seems  in  the  telling  a  foolish  and  almost  vulgar  flirtation, 
produced  one  of  the  most  impassioned  and  exquisite  songs 


468  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

of  love  and  despair  which  has  ever  been  written  in  any 

language. 

Ae  fond  kiss,  and  then  we  sever  ; 
Ae  farewell,  alas  !  forever  I  " 

There  is  a  stillness  of  exhausted  feeling  in  this  wonder- 
ful utterance  which  is  the  very  soul  of  despair. 

There  has  been  no  more  remarkable  moment  in  the  ex- 
perience of  the  town  which  has  known  so  many  strange 
and  striking  scenes,  though  its  interest  has  little  to  do  with 
history  or  even  with  national  feeling.  It  is  pure  human- 
ity in  an  unusual  development,  an  episode  in  the  life  of 
the  poet  such  as  has  many  less  important  parallels,  but 
scarcely  any  so  fully  representative  and  typical.  It  dis- 
closes to  us  suddenly,  as  by  a  flash  of  light  striking  into 
the  darkness,  the  persons,  the  entertainments,  the  senti- 
ments of  a  hundred  years  ago.  "We  make  improvements 
daily  in  external  matters,  but  society — we  had  almost  said 
humanity — rarely  learns.  There  is  not  the  smallest  hope 
that  in  Edinburgh  or  elsewhere  a  young  man  of  genius 
in  Burns's  position  would  now  be  either  more  wisely 
noticed  or  more  truly  benefited  by  such  a  period  of  close 
contact  with  people  who  ought  by  experience  and  knowl- 
edge to  know  better  than  he.  The  only  thing  that  is 
probable  is  a  f alling-off ,  not  an  advance.  I  think  it 
highly  doubtful  whether  a  ploughman  from  Ayrshire, 
however  superlative  his  genius,  would  now  be  received  at 
all  in  "  the  best  houses  "  and  by  the  first  men  and  women 
in  Edinburgh  ;  and  if  not  in  Edinburgh,  surely  nowhere 
else  would  such  a  reception  as  that  given  to  Burns  await 
the  untutored  poet.  The  world  has  seldom  another 
chance  permitted  to  it,  and  in  this  case  I  cannot  but  think 
it  would  be  worse  and  not  better  used. 


Royal  Edinburgh. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE    SHAKSPEAEE    OF    SCOTLAND. 

THERE  are  many  variations  in  degree  of  the  greatest 
human  gifts,  but  they  are  few  in  kind.  The  name  we 
have  ventured  to  place  at  the  head  of  this  chapter  is  one 
not  so  great  as  that  of  Shakspeare,  not  so  all-embracing 
— though  widely-embracing  beyond  any  other  second — 
not  so  ideal,  not  so  profound.  Walter  Scott  penetrated 
with  a  luminous  revelation  all  that  was  within  his  scope, 
the  most  different  kinds  and  classes  of  men,  those  whom 
he  loved  (and  he  loved  all  whom  it  was  possible  to  love) 
and  the  few  whom  he  hated,  with  the  same  comprehension 
and  power  of  disclosure.  But  Shakspeare  was  not  re- 
strained by  the  limits  of  any  personal  scope  or  knowledge. 
He  knew  Lear  and  Macbeth,  and  Hamlet  and  Prospero, 
though  they  were  beings  only  of  his  own  creation.  He 
could  embody  the  loftiest  passion  in  true  flesh  and  blood, 
and  show  us  how  a  man  can  be  moved  by  jealousy  or  am- 
bition in  the  highest  superlative  degree  and  yet  be  a  man 
with  all  the  claims  upon  our  understanding  and  pity  that 
are  possessed  by  any  brother  of  our  own.  Nothing  like 
Lear  ever  came  in  our  Scott's  way  :  that  extraordinary  em- 
bodiment of  human  passion  and  weakness,  the  forlorn  and 
awful  strength  of  the  aged  and  miserable,  did  not  present 
itself  to  his  large  and  genial  gaze.  It  would  not  have 
occurred  to  him  perhaps  had  he  lived  to  the  age  of  Methu- 
selah. He  knew  not  those  horrors  and  dreadful  depths 

469 


470  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

of  humanity  that  could  make  such  tragic  passion  possible. 
But  he  had  his  revenge  in  one  way  even  upon  Shakspeare. 
Dogberry  and  Verges,  as  types  of  the  muddle-headed  old 
watch — pompous,  confused,  and  self-important — are  al- 
ways diverting  ;  but  they  would  have  been  men  not  all 
ridiculous  had  Scott  taken  thorn  in  hand — real  creatures 
of  flesh  and  blood,  not  watchmen  in  the  abstract.  Our 
greater  poet  did  not  take  trouble  enough  to  make  them 
individual,  his  fancy  carrying  him  otherwhere,  and  leav- 
ing him  scarce  the  time  to  put  his  jotting  down.  To 
Shakspeare  the  great  ideals  whom  he  almost  alone  has 
been  able  to  make  into  flesh  and  blood  ;  to  Scott  all  the 
surrounding  world,  the  men  as  we  meet  them  about  the 
common  thoroughfares  of  life.  He  knows  no  Rosalind 
nor  Imogen,  but  on  the  other  hand  Jeanie  Deans  and 
Jenny  Headrigg  would  have  been  impossible  to  his  great 
predecessor.  Both,  we  may  remark,  are  incapable  of  a 
young  hero — the  Claudios  and  the  Bertrams  being  if  any- 
thing a  trifle  worse  than  Henry  Morton  and  Young  Lovel. 
But  whereas  Shakspeare  is  greatest  above  that  line  of  the 
conventional  ideal,  it  is  below  that  Sir  Walter  is  famous. 
The  one  has  no  restriction,  however  high  he  may  soar  ; 
the  other  finds  nothing  so  common  that  he  cannot  make 
it  immortal. 

It  is,  however,  especially  in  the  breadth  and  largeness 
of  a  humanity  which  has  scarcely  any  limit  to  its  sympathy 
and  understanding  that  the  great  romancist  of  Scotland 
resembles  the  greatest  of  English  poets.  They  are  both 
so  great,  so  broad,  so  little  restrained  by  any  individual 
limitations,  that  a  perverse  criticism  has  made  this  cath- 
olic and  all-comprehending  nature  a  kind  of  reproach  to 
both,  as  though  that  great  and  limpid  mirror  of  their 
minds,  in  which  all  nature  was  reflected,  was  less  noble 
than  the  sharp  face  of  a  stone  which  can  catch  but  one 
ray.  They  were  both  subject  to  political  prejudices  and 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND.  4.71 

prepossessions.  Shakspeare  has  made  of  many  a  youth 
of  the  nineteenth  century  an  ardent  Lancastrian,  ready  to 
pluck  a  red  rose  with  Somerset  and  die  for  Margaret  and 
her  prince ;  and  Scott  in  like  manner  has  made  many  a 
Jacobite,  though  in  the  latter  case  our  novelist  is  too  full 
of  sense  even  in  the  midst  of  his  own  inclinations  to  be- 
come ever  an  out-and-out  partisan.  But,  except  these  pre- 
possessions, they  have  no  parti  pr -is.  Every  faction  ren- 
ders up  its  soul  of  meaning,  the  most  diverse  figures  un- 
close themselves  side  by  side.  The  wit,  the  scholar,  the 
true  soldier,  the  braggart  and  thief,  the  Jew  and  the 
Christian,  the  Hamlet,  hero  of  all  time,  and  Shallow  and 
Slender  from  the  fat  pastures  of  English  rural  life,  come 
all  together,  each  as  true  as  if  on  him  alone  the  poet's  eye 
had  fixed.  And  Scott  is  like  him,  setting  before  us  with 
unerring  pencil  the  old  superstitious  despot  of  medieval 
France,  the  bustling  pedant  of  St.  James's,  the  plough- 
men and  shepherds,  the  churchmen,  the  Border  reivers 
and  Highland  caterans,  the  broad  country  lying  under  a 
natural  illumination,  without  strain  or  effort,  large  and 
temperate  as  the  day.  Neither  in  the  greatest  poet  nor 
the  great  romancer  is  there  any  force  put  upon  the  nat- 
ural fulness  of  life  to  twist  its  record  into  a  narrow  cir- 
cle with  one  motive  only.  It  is  the  round  world  and  all 
that  it  inhabits,  the  grandeur  and  divinity  of  a  universe, 
that  delights  them.  Their  view  is  large  as  the  vision  of 
God,  or  as  nearly  so  as  is  given  to  mortal  eyes.  It  is  in 
this,  above  all,  that  they  resemble  each  other.  In  degree 
Shakspeare,  it  need  not  be  said,  is  all-transcendent, 
reaching  heights  such  as  no  other  man  has  reached  in  de- 
lineation and  creation  :  but  Scott  is  of  his  splendid  species, 
one  of  his  kind,  the  only  one  among  all  the  many  sons  of 
genius  with  whom  this  island  has  been  blessed,  for  whom 
the  boldest  could  make  such  a  claim. 

Walter  Scott  belongs  to  all  Scotland.     He  was,  no  man 


472  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

more,  a  lover  of  the  woods  and  fields,  of  mountain-sides 
and  pastoral  braes,  of  the  river  and  forest,  Ettrick  and 
Tweed  and  Yarrow,  and  Perthshire — that  princely  dis- 
trict, half  Highland,  half  Lowland — and  the  chain  of 
silvery  lochs  that  pierce  the  mountain  shadows  through 
Stirling  and  Argyle  :  every  league  of  the  fair  country  he 
loved.  From  the  "Western  Isles  and  the  Orkneys  to  the 
very  fringe  of  debatable  land  which  parts  the  northern  and 
the  southern  half  of  Great  Britain — is  his,  and  has  tokens 
to  show  of  his  presence.  When  he  came  home  to  die  at 
the  end  of  almost  the  most  tragic  yet  most  noble  chapter  of 
individual  history  which  our  century  has  known,  it  was 
the  longing  of  his  sick  heart  above  all  other  that  he  should 
not  be  so  unblest  as  to  lay  his  bones  far  from  tbe  Tweed. 
But  yet,  above  all  other  places,  it  was  to  Edinburgh 
that  Scott  belonged.  His  birth,  his  growth,  the  familiar 
scenes  of  his  youth,  his  education  and  training,  the  busi- 
ness and  work  of  his  life,  were  all  associated  with  the 
ancient  capital.  George  Square — wich  its  homely  and 
comfortable  old-fashion,  which  has  nothing  to  do  with 
antiquity,  the  first  breaking  out  of  the  Edinburgh  citizens 
into  large  space  and  air  outside  the  strait  boundaries  of 
the  city,  with  the  Meadows  and  their  trees  beyond,  and 
all  the  sunshine  of  the  south  side  to  warm  the  deep  corps 
de  logis,  the  substantial  and  solid  mansions  which  are  so 
gray  without  yet  so  full  of  warmth  and  comfort  within — 
was  the  first  home  he  knew,  and  his  residence  up  to  man- 
hood. No  boy  could  be  more  an  Edinburgh  boy.  Lame 
though  he  was,  he  climbed  every  dangerous  point  upon 
the  hills,  and  knew  vhe  recesses  of  Arthur's  Seat  and 
Salisbury  Crags  by  heart  before  he  knew  his  Latin  gram- 
mar. His  schoolboy  fights,  his  snowballing,  the  little 
armies  of  urchins  set  in  battle  array,  the  friendly  feuds 
of  gentle  and  simple  (sometimes  attended  by  hard  knocks, 
as  among  his  own  Liddesdale  farmers),  fill  the  streets 


Royal  Edinburgh. 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND.  473 

with  amusing  recollections.  And  when  he  was  promoted 
in  due  time  to  the  Parliament  House  and  to  all  the  frolics 
of  the  youthful  Bar,  and  his  proud  father  steps  forth  in 
the  snuff-colored  suit  which  Mr.  Saunders  Fairford  wore 
after  him,  to  tell  his  friends  that  ' '  my  son  Walter  passed 
his  private  Scots  law  examination  with  good  approbation/' 
and  on  Friday  "  puts  on  the  gown  and  gives  a  bit  chack 
of  dinner  to  his  friends  and  acquaintances,  as  is  the 
custom/'  how  familiar  and  kindly  is  the  scene,  how  the 
sober  house  lights  up,  and  the  good  wine  about  which  we 
have  known  all  our  lives  comes  out  of  the  cellar  and  the 
jokes  fly  round — Parliament  House  pleasantries  and  rec- 
ollections of  the  witticisms  of  the  Bench  gradually  giv- 
ing place  to  the  sallies  of  the  wild  young  wits,  the  shaft 
from  the  new-bent  bow  of  the  young  advocate  himself. 
Nothing  can  be  more  true  and  simple  than  he  is  through 
all  the  tale,  or  more  real  than  the  Edinburgh  atmosphere  ; 
the  fun  that  is  mostly  in  the  foreground  ;  the  work  that 
is  pushed  into  corners  yet  always  gets  done,  though  it  has 
not  the  air  of  being  important  except  to  the  excellent 
father  whose  steps  on  the  stair  are  the  signal  for  the  dis- 
appearance of  a  chess-board  into  a  drawer  or  a  romance 
under  the  papers, — well-known  tricks  of  youth  which  we 
have  all  been  guilty  of.  There  is  a  curious  evidence,  how- 
ever, in  Lockhart's  Life,  less  known  than  the  usual  tales 
of  frolic  and  apparent  idleness,  of  the  professional  trick  of 
Scott's  handwriting,  which  showed  how  steadily  he  must 
have  labored  even  in  his  delightful,  easy,  innocently 
irregular  youth.  "  I  allude  particularly  to  a  sort  of 
nourish  at  the  bottom  of  the  page,  originally,  I  presume, 
adopted  in  engrossing  as  a  safeguard  against  the  intrusion 
of  a  forged  line  between  the  legitimate  text  and  the  at- 
testing signature.  He  was  quite  sensible,"  adds  his  biog- 
rapher, "that  this  ornament  might  as  well  be  dispensed 
with  ;  and  his  family  often  heard  him  mutter  after  in,- 


474:  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

voluntarily  performing  it,  '  There  goes  the  old  shop 
again  \"  Which  of  us  now  could  see  that  flourish  with- 
out the  water  coming  into  our  eyes  ? 

It  is  impossible  to  eradicate,  from  the  minds  of  youth- 
ful students  at  least,  the  admiration  which  always  attends 
the  performances  of  the  young  man  who  gains  his  suc- 
cesses without  apparently  working  for  them.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  it  is  the  work  which  we  ought  to  respect  rather 
than  that  apparently  fortuitous  accidental  result  :  but 
nothing  will  ever  cure  us  of  our  native  delight  in  an  effect 
which  appears  to  have  no  vulgar  cause,  and  great  has 
been  the  misery  produced  by  this  prejudice  to  many  a 
youth  who  has  begun  with  the  tradition  of  easy  triumph 
and  presumed  upon  it  to  the  loss  of  all  his  after-life.  But 
when  there  shows  in  the  apparent  idler  a  sign  like  this 
of  many  a  long  hour's  labor  ignored  and  lightly  thought 
of,  covered  over  with  a  pleasant  veil  of  fun  and  ease  and 
happy  leisure,  the  combination  is  one  that  no  heart  can 
resist. 

Scott  had  read  everything  he  could  lay  his  hands  on 
while  he  was  still  a  child,  and  boasted  himself  a  virtuoso, 
that  is,  according  to  his  explanation,  at  six  years  old, 
"  one  who  wishes  'and  will  know  everything  ;  "  but  his 
boyish  tastes  and  triumphs  became  more  and  more  ath- 
letic as  he  gained  a  firmer  use  of  his  bodily  powers.  No 
diseased  consciousness  of  disability  in  respect  to  his  lame- 
ness, like  that  which  embittered  Byron,  could  find  a  place 
in  the  rough  wholesome  atmosphere  of  the  Edinburgh 
High  School  and  play-grounds,  where  nobody  was  too 
delicate  about  reminding  him  of  his  infirmity,  and  the 
stout-hearted  little  hero  took  it  like  a  man,  offering  "to 
fight  mounted,"  and  being  tied  upon  a  board  accordingly 
for  his  first  combat.  "You  may  take  him  for  a  poor 
lameter,"  said  one  of  the  Eldin  Clerks,  a  sailor,  with  equal 
friendly  frankness  to  a  party  of  strangers,  "  but  he  is  the 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  EDINBURGH.-Page  474. 

Royal  Edinburgh. 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND.  475 

first  to  begin  a  row,  and  the  last  to  end  it."  To  such  a 
youth  the  imperfection  was  a  virtue  the  more.  When  the 
jovial  band  strolled  forth  upon  long  walks  the  cheerful 
11  lameter  "  bargained  for  three  miles  an  hour,  and  kept 
up  with  the  best.  They  would  start  at  five  in  the  morn- 
ing, beguiling  the  way  with  endless  pranks,  on  one  occa- 
sion at  least  without  a  single  sixpence  in  all  their  youthful 
pockets  with  which  to  refresh  themselves  during  a  thirty 
miles'  round.  "  We  asked  every  now  and  then  at  a  cot- 
tage door  for  a  drink  of  water  ;  and  one  or  two  of  the 
good  wives,  observing  our  worn-out  looks,  brought  forth 
milk  instead  of  water,  so  with  that  and  hips  and  haws  we 
carne  in  little  the  worse."  Little  they  cared  for  fatigue 
and  inconvenience  ;  they  were  things  to  laugh  over  when 
the  lads  got  back.  Scott  only  wished  he  had  been  a  player 
on  the  flute,  like  George  Primrose  in  the  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field,  and  his  father  shook  his  head  and  doubted  the  boy 
was  born  "  for  nae  better  than  a  gangrel  scrapegut" — re- 
proach of  little  gravity,  as  the  expedition  so  poorly  pro- 
visioned was  of  little  harm.  Thus  the  young  gentlemen 
bore  cheerfully  what  would  have  been  hardship  to  a  plough- 
man, and  gibed  even  at  each  other's  weaknesses  without 
a  spark  of  unkindness,  which  made  the  weakness  itself 
into  a  robust  matter  of  fact  not  to  be  brooded  over.  High 
susceptibility  might  have  suffered  from  the  treatment, 
but  high  susceptibility  generally  means  egotism  and  inor- 
dinate self-esteem,  qualities  which  it  is  the  very  best  use 
of  public  school  and  college  to  conjure  away. 

Nothing  indeed  more  cheerful,  more  full  of  endless 
frolic  and  enjoyment,  fresh  air  and  fun  and  feeling,  ever 
existed  than  the  young  manhood  of  Walter  Scott.  Talk 
of  Scotcli  gravity  and  seriousness  !  The  houses  in  which 
they  were  received  as  they  roamed  about — farmers'  or 
lairds',  it  was  all  the  same  to  the  merry  lads — were  only 
too  uproarious  in  their  mirth;  with  songs  and  laughter 


476  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

they  made  the  welkin  ring.  At  home  in  Edinburgh  the 
fun  might  be  less  noisy,  but  it  was  not  less  sincere.  In 
the  very  Parliament  House  itself  the  young  men  clustered 
in  their  corner,  telling  each  other  the  last  good  things, 
and  with  much  ado  to  keep  their  young  laughter  within 
the  bounds  of  decorum.  The  judge  on  the  Bench,  the 
Lord  President  himself,  greatest  potentate  of  all,  was  not 
more  safe  from  the  audacious  wits  than  Poor  Peter 
Peebles.  There  was  nothing  they  did  not  laugh  at,  them- 
selves and  each  other  as  much  as  Lord  Braxfield,  and  all 
the  humors  of  a  town  more  full  of  anecdote  and  jest, 
laughable  eccentricity  and  keen  satire  and  amusing  com- 
ment, than  any  town  in  literature.  The  best  joke  of  all 
perhaps  was  Sydney  Smith's  famous  ~bon  mot  about  the 
surgical  operation,  which  no  doubt  he  meant  as  an  excel- 
lent joke  in  the  midst  of  that  laughing  community,  where 
the  fun  was  only  too  fast  and  furious.  Nowadays,  when 
life  is  more  temperate  and  the  world  in  general  has 
mended  its  manners,  the  habits  of  that  period  fill  us  with 
dismay ;  but  perhaps  after  all  there  was  less  harm  done 
than  appears,  and  not  more  of  the  fearful  tribute  of  young 
life  which  our  fated  race  is  always  paying  than  is  still 
exacted  amid  a  population  much  less  generally  addicted 
to  excess.  But  that  of  course  increased  rather  than  dim- 
inished the  jovial  aspect  of  Edinburgh  life  when  Walter 
Scott  was  young,  and  when  the  few  cares  he  had  in  hand, 
the  occasional  bit  of  work,  interfered  very  little  with  the 
warm  and  lively  social  life  in  the  midst  of  which  he  had 
been  born.  He  dwelt,  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  among 
his  own  people,  his  friends,  the  sons  of  his  father's  friends, 
his  associates  all  belonging  to  families  like  his  own,  of 
good  if  modest  rank  and  lineage,  the  "  kent  folk  "  of 
whom  Scotland  loves  to  keep  up  the  record.  This,  which 
is  perhaps  one  of  the  greatest  advantages  with  which  a 
young  man  can  enter  on  life,  was  his  from  his  infancy. 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND. 

He  and  his  companions  had  been  at  school  together,  to- 
gether in  the  college  classes,  in  frequent  social  meetings, 
on  the  floor  of  the  Parliament  House.  Familiar  faces 
and  kind  greetings  were  round  him  wherever  he  went. 
Xo  doubt  these  circumstances,  so  genial,  so  friendly  and 
favorable,  helped  to  perfect  the  most  kind,  the  most  gen- 
erous and  sunshiny  of  natures.  And  thus  no  man  could 
be  more  completely  at  once  the  best  product  and  most 
complete  representative  of  his  native  soil. 

His  life  too  was  as  prosperous  and  full  of  good  fortune 
and  happiness  as  a  man  could  desire.  He  married  at 
twenty-six,  and  a  few  years  later  received  the  appointment 
of  Sheriff-Depute  of  Selkiikshire,  which  rendered  him  in- 
dependent of  the  precarious  incomings  of  his  profession, 
and  made  the  pleasure  he  always  took  in  roaming  the 
country  into  a  necessary  part  of  his  life's  work.  He  had 
begun  a  playful  and  pleasurable  authorship  some  time 
before  with  some  translations  from  the  German,  Burger's 
Lenore  and  Goethe's  Gotz  von  Berlic-liingen — the  first  of 
which  was  hastily  made  into  a  little  book,  daintily  printed 
and  bound,  in  order  to  help  his  suit  with  an  early  love,  so 
easy,  so  little  premeditated.,  was  this  beginning.  AVith 
equal  simplicity  and  absence  of  intention  he  slid  into  the 
Border  Minstrelsy,  which  he  intended  not  for  the  begin- 
ning of  a  long  literary  career,  but  in  the  first  place  for 
"a  job  "  to  Ballantyne  the  printer,  whom  he  had  per- 
suaded to  establish  himself  in  Edinburgh — the  best  of 
printers  and  the  most  attached  of  faithful  and  humble 
friends — and  for  fun  and  the  pleasure  of  scouring  the 
country  in  pursuit  of  ballads,  which  was  a  search  he  had 
already  entered  upon  to  his  great  enjoyment.  From  this 
nothing  was  so  easy  as  to  float  into  original  poetry,  in- 
spired by  the  same  impulse  and  inspiration  as  his  ballads. 
One  of  the  ladies  of  the  house  of  Buccleuch  told  him  the 
story  of  the  elfin  page,  and  begged  him  to  make  a  ballad 


478  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

of  it ;  and  from  this  suggestion  the  Lay  of  the  Last  Min- 
strel arose.  The  time  was  ripe  for  giving  forth  all  that 
had  been  unconsciously  stirring  in  his  teeming  fertile  im- 
agination. It  came  at  once  like  a  sudden  bursting  into 
flower,  with  a  splendid  eclosion,  out-bursting,  involuntary 
unlaborious,  delightful  to  himself  as  to  mankind.  From 
henceforward  his  name  stood  in  one  of  the  highest  places 
of  literature  and  his  fame  was  assured. 

Nothing  could  be  more  unintentional,  more  sponta- 
neous, almost  careless  ;  a  thing  done  for  his  pleasure  far 
more  than  with  any  serious  purpose  ;  nothing — except  the 
later  beginning,  equally  unintentional,  of  a  still  more  im- 
portant stream  of  production  The  poems  of  Scott  will 
always  be  open  to  much  criticism  ;  even  those  who  love 
them  most — and  there  arc  many  whose  love  for  this  fresh, 
free,  spontaneous,  delightful  fountain  of  song  is  strong 
enough  to  repress  every  impulse  of  criticism  and  trans- 
port it  beyond  the  reach  of  comment  to  a  romantic  pn- 
chanted  land  of  its  own,  where  it  flows  in  native  sunshine 
and  delight  forever — declining  to  pronounce  any  definite 
judgment  as  to  their  greatness.  But  to  Scott  in  his  after- 
work  we  are  inclined  to  say  no  man  worthy  of  expressing 
an  opinion  can  give  any  but  the  highest  place.  It  is  true, 
and  the  fact  has  to  be  admitted  with  astonishment  and 
regret,  that  one  great  writer,  his  countryman,  speaking 
the  same  language  and  in  every  way  capable  of  pronounc- 
ing judgment,  has  failed  to  appreciate  Sir  Walter.  We 
cannot  tell  why,  nor  pretend  to  solve  that  amazing  ques- 
tion. Perhaps  it  was  the  universal  acclaim,  the  consent 
of  every  voice,  that  awoke  the  germ  of  perversity  that  was 
in  Thomas  Carlyle  :  fin  impulse  of  contradiction,  especi- 
ally in  face  of  an  opinion  too  unanimous,  which  is  one  of 
our  national  characteristics  :  perhaps  one  of  those  prej- 
udices pertinacious  as  the  rugged  peasant  nature  itself, 
which  sometimes  warps  the  clearest  judgment ;  perhaps, 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND. 


4:79 


but  this  we  find  it  difficult  to  believe,  a  narrower  inten- 
sity and  passion  of  meaning  in  himself  which  found  little 


PLAYFAIR'S  MONUMENT,  CALTON  HILL. 


reflection  in  the  great  limpid  mirror  which  Scott  held  up 
to  nature.     The  beginning  of  Scott's  chief  and  greatest 


480  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

work  was  as  fortuitous,  as  accidental  (if  we  may  use  the 
word),  us  the  poetry.     He  took  up  by  some  passing  im- 
pulse the  idea  of  a  prose  story  on  the  events  of  the  'forty- 
five,  which  perhaps  he  considered  too  recent  to  be  treated 
in  poetry  ;    wrote   (everybody  knows  the    story)   half  a 
volume,  read  it  to   a  trusted  critic,  who  probably  con- 
sidered it  foolish  for  a  man  who  had  risen  to  the  heights 
of  fame  by  one  kind  of  composition  to  risk  himself  now 
with  another.     It  was  very  likely  that  Scott  himself  was 
easily  moved  to  the  same  opinion.     He  tossed  the  MS. 
into  a  drawer,  and  gave  it  up.     There  had  been  no  special 
motive  in  the  effort,  and  it  cost  him  nothing  to  put  it 
aside,   to  whistle   for  his  dogs,  and  go  out  for  a  long 
round  by  wood  and  hill,  or  to  take  his  gun  or  rod,  or  to 
entertain  his  visitors — all  of  which  were  more  rational, 
more  entertaining,  and  altogether  important  things  to  do 
than  the  writing  of  a  dull  story,  which  after  all  was  not 
his  line.     For  years  the  beginning  chapters  of  Waverley 
lay  there  unknown.     They  lay  very  quietly,  we  may  well 
believe,  not  bursting  the  dull  enclosure  as  they  might 
have  done  had  the  Baron  of  Bradwardine  been  yet  born  ; 
but  that  good  young  Waverley  was  always  a  little  dull, 
and  might  have  slept  till  doomsday  had  nothing  occurred 
to  disturb  his  rest.      One    day,   however,  some   fishing 
tackle  was  wanted  for  the  use  of  one  of  Scott's  perpetual 
visitors   at   Ashiestiel — not  even   for   himself,   for   some 
chance  man  taking  advantage  of  the  Shirra's  open  house. 
Visitor  arriving  in  a  good  hour !  fortunate  sorner,  to  be 
thereafter  blessed  of  all  men  !     Let  us  hope  he  got  just 
the  lines  he  wanted  and  had  a  good  day's  sport.     For  in 
his  search  Scott's  eyes  lighted  upon  the  bundle  of  written 
pages.     "  Hallo  !  "  he  must  have  saiJ  to  himself,  "there 
they  are  !     Lot's  see  if  they're  as  bad  as  Willie  Erskine 
thought."     In  his  candid  soul  he  did  not  think  they  were 
very   good     unless   it  was    perhaps    the   description  of 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND.  481 

Waverley  Honor,  a  great  mild  English  mansion  which 
he  would  admire  all  the  more  that  it  was  so  unlike  Tully 
Veolan.  Perhaps  it  was  the  contrast  which  brought  into 
his  teeming  brain  a  sudden  vision  of  that  "Scottish 
manor-house  sixty  years  since,"  which  he  went  off 
straightway  and  built  in  his  eighth  chapter  with  the  baron 
and  all  his  surroundings,  which  must  have  been  awaiting 
impatient  that  happy  moment  to  burst  into  life. 

And  thus  by  spontaneous  accident,  by  delightful,  care- 
less chance,  so  to  speak,  the  thing  was  done.  One  won- 
ders by  what  equally,  nay  more  fortunate  unthought-of 
haphazard  it  was,  that  the  country  rogue  Shakspeare,  his 
bright  eyes  shining  with  mock  penitence  for  the  wildness 
of  his  woodland  career,  and  the  air  and  the  accent  of  the 
fields  still  on  his  honeyed  lips,  first  found  out  that  he 
could  string  a  story  together  for  the  theater  and  make 
the  old  knights  and  the  fair  ladies  live  again.  Of  this 
there  is  no  record,  but  only  enough  presumption,  we  think, 
to  make  it  sufficiently  clear  that  the  discovery  which  has 
ever  since  been  one  of  the  chief  glories  of  the  English 
name,  and  added  the  most  wonderful  immortal  inhabitants 
to  the  population,  was  made,  like  Scott's,  by  what  seems  a 
divine  chance,  without  apparent  preparation  or  likelihood. 
In  our  day  much  more  importance  is  given  to  a  develop- 
ment which  the  scientific  thinker  would  fondly  hope  to 
be  traceable  by  all  the  leadings  of  race  and  inheritance 
into  an  evolution  purely  natural  and  to  be  expected ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  nothing  which  appears 
more  splendid  and  dignified  to  others  than  the  aspect  of 
a  life  devoted  to  poetry,  in  which  the  man  becomes  but  a 
kind  of  solemn  incubator  of  his  own  thoughts.  It  will 
always  be,  however,  an  additional  delight  to  the  greater 
part  of  the  human  race  to  see  how  here  and  there  the 
greatest  of  all  heavenly  tools  is  found  unawares  by  the 
happy  hand  that  can  wield  it,  no  one  knowing  who  has 


482  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

put  it  there  ready  for  his  triumphant  grasp  when  the  fated 
moment  comes. 

Everybody  will  remember  as  a  pendant — but  one  so 
much  more  grave  that  we  hesitate  to  cite  it,  though  the 
coincidence  is  curious — the  pause  made  by  Dante  in  the 
beginning  of  the  Inferno,  which  resembles  so  exactly  the 
pause  in  Scott's  career.  The  great  Florentine  had  written 
seven  cantos  of  his  wonderful  poem  when  the  rush  of  his 
affairs  carried  him  away  from  all  such  tranquil  work  and 
left  the  Latin  fragment,  among  other  more  vulgar  papers, 
shoveled  hastily  into  some  big  cassone  in  the  house  in 
Florence  from  which  he  was  a  banished  man.  It  was 
found  there  after  five  years  by  a  nephew  who  would  fain 
have  tried  his  prentice  hand  upon  the  poem,  yet  finally 
took  the  better  part  of  sending  it  to  its  author — who  im- 
mediately resumed  lo  dico  sequitando,  in  a  burst  of  satis- 
faction to  have  recovered  what  he  must  have  begun  with 
far  more  zeal  and  intention  than  Scott.  The  resemblance, 
however,  which  is  so  curiously  exact,  the  seven  cantos  and 
the  seven  chapters,  the  five  years'  interval,  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  work  resumed,  is,  different  as  are  the  men  and 
their  work,  one  of  those  fantastic  parallels  which  are  de- 
lightful to  the  fantastic  soul.  Xothing  could  be  more 
unlike  than  that  dark  and  splendid  poem  to  Scott's  sun- 
shiny and  kindly  art ;  nothing  less  resembling  than  the 
proud  embittered  exile  Avith  his  hand  against  every  man, 
and  the  genial  romancer  whose  heart  overflowed  with  the 
milk  of  human  kindness.  Yet  this  strange  occurrence  in 
both  lives  takes  an  enhanced  interest  from  the  curious 
dissimilarity  which  makes  the  repetition  of  the  fact  more 
curious  still. 

The  sudden  burst  into  light  and  publicity  of  a  gift  which 
had  been  growing  through  all  the  changes  of  private  life, 
of  the  wonderful  stream  of  knowledge,  recollection,  divi- 
nation, boundless  acquaintance  with  and  affection  for  hu- 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND. 

man  nature,  which  had  gladdened  the  Edinburgh  streets, 
the  Mussel  burgh  sands,  the  Southland  moors  and  river- 
sides, since  ever  Walter  Scott  had  begun  to  roam  among 
them,  with  his  cheerful  band  of  friends,  his  good  stories, 
his  kind  and  gentle  thoughts — was  received  by  the  world 
with  a  burst  of  delighted  recognition  to  which  we  know 
no  parallel.  We  do  not  know,  alas  !  what  happened  when 
the  audience  in  the  Globe  Theater  made  a  similar  discov- 
ery. Perhaps  the  greater  gift,  by  its  very  splendor, 
Avould  be  less  easily  perceived  in  the  dazzling  of  a  glory 
hitherto  unknown,  and  obscured  it  may  be  by  jealousies 
of  actors  and  their  inaptitude  to  do  justice  to  the  wonder- 
ful poetry  put  into  their  hands.  But  of  that  we  know 
nothing.  We  know,  however,  that  there  were  no  two 
opinions  about  Waverley.  It  took  the  world  by  storm, 
which  had  had  no  such  new  sensation  and  no  such  delight- 
ful amusement  for  many  a  day.  It  was  not  only  the  be- 
ginning of  a  new  and  wonderful  school  in  romance,  a  fresh 
chapter  in  literature,  but  the  revelation  of  a  region  and  a 
race  unknown.  Scotland  had  begun  to  glow  in  the  sun- 
shine of  poetry,  in  glimpses  of  Burns's  westland  hills  and 
fields,  of  Scott's  moss-troopers  and  romantic  landscapes, 
visions  of  battle  and  old  tradition  :  but  the  wider  horizon 
of  a  life  more  familiar,  of  a  broad  country  full  of  nature, 
full  of  character,  running  over  with  fun  and  pawky  hu- 
mor, thrilling  with  high  enthusiasm  and  devotion,  where 
men  were  still  ready  to  risk  everything  in  life  for  a  falling 
cause,  and  other  men  not  unwilling  to  pick  up  the  spoils, 
was  a  discovery  and  surprise  more  delightful  than  any- 
thing that  had  happened  to  the  generation.  The  books 
flew  through  the  island  like  magic,  penetrating  to  corners 
unthought  of,  uniting  gentle  and  simple  in  an  enthusiasm 
beyond  parallel.  How  the  multitude  got  at  them  at  all 
it  is  difficult  to  understand,  for  these  were  the  days  of 
really  high  prices,  before  the  actual  cost  of  a  book  got 


484  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

modified  by  one-half  as  now,  and  when  there  were  as  yet 
no  cheap  editions.  Waverley  was  printed  in  three  small 
volumes  at  the  cost  of  a  guinea.  We  believe  that  to  buy 
books  was  more  usual  then  than  now,  and  there  were  circu- 
lating libraries  everywhere,  conveying  perhaps  the  stream 
of  literature  more  evenly  over  the  country  than  can  be  at- 
tained by  one  gigantic  Mudie.  At  all  events,  by  what- 
ever means  it  was  procured,  Waverley  and  its  successors 
were  read  everywhere,  not  only  in  great  houses  but  in 
small,  wherever  there  was  intelligence  and  a  taste  for 
books  ;  and  the  interest,  the  curiosity,  the  eagerness,  were 
everywhere  overwhelming.  I  have  heard  of  girls  in  a 
dressmaker's  workroom  who  kept  the  last  volume  in  a 
drawer,  from  whence  it  was  read  aloud  by  one  to  the  rest, 
the  drawer  being  closed  hurriedly  whenever  the  mistress 
came  that  way.  From  this  humble  scene  to  the  highest 
in  the  land,  where  the  Prince  Regent  sat — 

"  His  table  spread  with  tea  and  toast, 
Death-warrants,  and  the  Morning  Post." 

these  volumes  went  everywhere.  One  of  them  lies  before 
me  now  in  rough  boards  of  paper,  with  the  "  blue  back" 
of  which  one  of  Scott's  correspondents  talks,  not  a  pre- 
possessing volume,  but  independent  of  externals  and  all 
things  else  except  its  own  native  excellence  and  power. 

For  fifteen  years  after,  this  stream  of  living  literature 
poured  forth  in  the  largest  generous  volume  like  a  great 
river,  through  every  region  where  English  was  spoken  or 
known.  His  work  was  as  the  march  of  a  battalion,  always 
increasing,  new  detachments  appearing  suddenly,  no  wan 
individual,  now  a  group,  to  join  the  line.  The  Baron  of 
Bradwardine  with  his  attendant  bailie  ;  Vich  Ian  Vohr 
and  nobleEvan  Dhu,  and  all  the  clan  :  the  family  at  El- 
langowan  and  that  at  Charlieshope,  good  Dandie  and  all 
his  delightful  belongings ;  Jock  Jabos  and  the  rest ; 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND.  485 

Monkbarns  and  Edie  Ochiltree,  and  all  the  pathos  of  the 
Mucklebackits  ;  Bailie  Nicol  Jarvie  and  the  Dougal  Cra- 
tur  ;  humors  of  the  clachan  and  the  hillside  ;  Jeanie  Deans 
in  her  perfect  humbleness  and  truth.  It  would  be  vain 
to  attempt  to  name  the  new  inhabitants  of  Scotland  who 
appeared  out  of  the  unseen  wherever  Scott  moved. 
Neither  to  himself  nor  to  his  audience  could  it  seem  that 
these  friends  of  all  were  new  created,  invented  by  any  man. 
Scott,  who  alone  could  do  it,  withdrew  the  veil  that  had 
concealed  them.  He  opened  up  an  entire  country,  a  full 
world  of  men  and  women,  so  living,  so  various,  with 
their  natural  garb  of  fitting  language,  and  their  hearts  of 
natural  sentiment,  and  the  thoughts  which  they  must 
have  been  thinking,  by  inalienable  right  of  their  human- 
ity. There  might  have  been  better  plots  or  more  care- 
fully constructed  stories  ;  as  indeed  in  life,  heaven  knows, 
all  our  stories  might  be  much  better  constructed ;  but 
could  we  conceive  it  possible  that  these,  our  country-folk 
and  friends,  could  be  dismissed  again  off  the  face  of  the 
earth,  how  improverished,  how  diminished,  would  Scot- 
land be  !  The  want  of  them  is  more  than  we  could  con- 
template, and  we  can  well  understand  how  our  country 
must  have  appeared  to  the  world  a  poor  little  turbulent 
country,  without  warmth  or  wealth  before  these  represent- 
atives of  a  robust  and  manifold  race  were  born. 

Yet,  amid  the  delightful  enrichment  of  these  produc- 
tions to  the  nation  and  the  world,  the  man  himself  who 
produced  them  was  perhaps  the  finest  revelation  of  all. 
And  here  he  transcends  for  once  the  larger  kindred  genius 
of  whom  we  do  not  know,  yet  believe,  that  he  was  such  a 
man  as  Scott,  though  better  off  in  one  way  and  less  well 
in  others.  Shakspeare  must  have  been  somewhat  op- 
pressed with  noble  patrons,  which  Scott  never  was — pa- 
trons to  whom  his  own  splendid  courtesy  and  the  magnify- 
ing glamour  in  his  poetic,  eyes  must  sometimes  have  made^ 


486  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

him  more  flattering  than  was  needful,  overwhelming  them 
them  with  magnificent  words  ;  but  on  the  other  hand  he 
had  not  those  modern  drawbacks  under  which  Scott's 
great  career  was  so  bitterly  burdened,  the  strain  for  money 
the  constant  combat  with  debt  and  liability.  To  bear  the 
first  yoke  must  have  taken  much  of  a  man's  strength 
and  tired  him  exceedingly  :  but  to  bear  the  second  is 
perhaps  the  severest  test  to  which  any  buoyant  spirit  can 
be  put.  And  from  the  very  beginning  of  his  career  as  a 
novelist  Scott  had  this  burden  upon  his  shoulders.  He 
bore  the  chains  very  lightly  at  first  with  a  hundred  hair- 
breadth 'scapes  which  made  the  struggle — as  even  that 
struggle  can  be  made  while  the  sufferer  is  strong  and  young 
— almost  exhilarating,  with  glee  in  the  relief  and  the 
power  to  surmount  every  difficulty,  and  a  faith  strength- 
ened by  numberless  examples  of  the  certainty — how- 
ever dark  things  might  seem  up  to  the  very  last  moment 
— of  bursting  through,  with  an  exquisite  sensation  of 
success,  the  hardest  coil  of  circumstance.  But  as  Scott 
grew  older  these  obstacles  grew  stronger  ;  he  could  not 
put  sense  or  prudence  into  the  heads  of  his  colleagues, 
and  it  was  hard  to  teach  himself,  the  most  liberal  the  most 
hospitable  and  princely  of  entertainers,  those  habits  of 
frugality  which  are  never  harder  to  learn  than  by  a  Scots 
gentlemen  of  the  ancient  strain  accustomed  to  keep  open 
house.  I  do  not  think  it  has  ever  been  acknowledged 
that  there  is  in  this  desperate  struggle  to  keep  afloat  a 
certain  intoxication  of  its  own.  To  foil  your  pursuers, 
your  enemies,  whether  they  take  the  form  of  armed  as- 
sailants or  of  pressing  creditors,  by  ever  another  and  an- 
other daring  combination,  by  sudden  reliefs  unthought  of, 
by  a  bold  coup  executed  at  the  very  moment  when  the 
crisis  seems  inevitable,  by  all  the  happy  yet  desperate 
chances  of  warfare,  has  a  fascination  in  it  which  no  one 
could  conceive  as  attending  a  sordid  struggle  for  money. 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND.  487 

The  pursuit  becomes  exciting,  breathless,  in  proportion 
as  it  becomes  desperate.  Sometimes,  when  all  the  stars 
in  their  courses  have  seemed  to  be  fighting  against  the 
combatant,  a  sudden  aid  like  the  very  interposition  of 
heaven  will  bring  him  safety  ;  and  a  confidence  in  this 
interposition  takes  possession  of  him.  He  does  not  see 
how  deliverance  can  come,  but  it  will  come.  His  labor- 
ing breast  strains,  his  brain  whirls,  he  is  at  his  last  gasp  : 
when  all  at  once  the  heart  leaps  up  in  his  bosom,  the 
wheels  in  his  head  stand  still,  a  flash  of  satisfaction  comes 
over  him.  Once  more  and  once  more,  again  and  again,  at 
the  last  gasp  of  the  struggle  he  is  saved. 

No  doubt  something  of  this  was  in  the  long  and  desper- 
ate fight  which  Scott  waged  with  the  creditors  of  the  Bal- 
lantynes,  who  were  also  his  own.  The  worst  of  the  strug- 
gle is  that  it  almost  legalizes  a  prodigality  which  to  men 
always  fixed  on  solid  ground  would  be  impossible.  The 
conviction  that  the  money  will  come  somehow,  added  to 
the  still  more  intoxicating  conviction  that  this  somehow 
depends  oftenest  upon  your  own  unrivalled  power  of  work, 
and  the  confidence  which  all  men  have  in  you,  permits, 
almost  sanctions,  a  yielding  to  personal  temptations,  and 
the  indulgence  of  a  little  taste  and  inclination  of  your 
own  in  the  midst  of  so  many  burdens  for  others.  Thus 
Abbotsford  grew,  of  which  all  the  critics  have  talked  as 
if  its,  alas  !  somewhat  sham  antiquity  and  its  few  acres 
had  been  the  cause  of  all  the  trouble.  One  could  have 
wished  that  Scott's  taste  had  been  more  true,  that  he  had 
so  clearly  bought  and  so  fondly  collected  curiosities  more 
worthy,  that  he  should  have  had  a  genuine  old  house,  a 
direct  and  happy  lineage,  son  and  son's  son,  to  bear  his 
name — not  to  posterity,  with  whom  it  was  safe,  but  on 
Tweedside  among  the  other  Scotts, — a  kindly  and  not  ig- 
noble ambition.  But  he  has  himself  forestalled  the  criti- 
cisms of  the  antiquarians  by  that  delightful  record  of  good. 


488  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

Monkbarns's  mistakes  and  deceptions  which  would  make 
-us  forgive  him  for  any  "  lang  ladle  "  or  fictitious  relic  ; 
and  it  would  be  a  hard  heart  that  would  be  otherwise  than 
thankful  that  he  had  so  much  as  Abbotsford  to  indemnify 
him  for  his  labors  and  trials.  As  the  time  approached 
when  he  was  no  longer  able  to  maintain  that  gallant  strug- 
gle, and  the  power  of  labor  failed  and  confidence  was  lost, 
the  position  of  the  man  becomes  more  tragical  than  the 
spectator  can  well  bear  to  look  upon.  Who  can  read  un- 
moved the  story  of  the  time  when  his  faithful  friends 
(though  it  was  their  necessities  that  had  pulled  him  down 
to  the  ground  of  this  bitter  failure)  had  to  come  and  tell 
him  that  his  last  romance  was  scarcely  worth  paper  and 
print  ?  who  could  refrain  from  going  down  on  his  knees 
to  kiss  that  failing  hand  which  could  now  only  bring  forth 
Count  Robert  of  Paris  where  once  it  had  set  out  in  glori- 
ous array  of  battle  Sir  Kenneth  of  Scotland,  and  the  stout 
old  Constable  of  Chester,  and  Front  de  Bceuf  and  the 
Scottish  archers — and  which  still  could  not  be  inactive, 
but  would  struggle  on,  on — to  pay  that  miserable  money 
and  leave  behind  a  spotless  name  ! 

There  is  one  melancholy  and  almost  terrible  consolation 
in  such  a  heartbreaking  'record,  terrible  from  the  light  it 
throws  upon  the  constitution  of  human  nature  and  the 
conditions  of  that  supreme  sympathy  which  is  the  noblest 
kind  of  fame.  Had  Sir  Walter  been  able  to  throw  his 
burdens  from  him,  had  he  loosed  the  millstone  from  his 
neck  and  retired  in  full  credit  and  comfort  to  his  Abbots- 
ford  to  pass  the  conclusion  of  peaceful  and  glorious  days 
on  the  banks  of  the  Tweed — had  we  known  him  only  as 
the  greatest  romancist  of  the  world,  the  next  to  Shakspeare 
in  large  creation  and  revelation  of  mankind,  proud  had 
'  every  Scotsman  been  of  his  name,  and  fondly  had  the  na- 
tion cherished  his  memory.  But  when  his  brilliant  and 
wonderful  life  fell  under  the  shadow  of  all  these  tragical 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND.  439 

clouds,  when  its  course  was  arrested  by  obstacles  which 
are  usually  unsurmountable,  before  which  any  other  man 
must  have  broken  down,  when  he  stood  in  the  face  of 
fate,  in  the  face  of  every  misfortune,  broken  in  health,  in 
hope,  in  power,  a  lonely  man  where  he  had  been  the  center 
of  every  joy  in  life,  an  enchanter  with  his  magic  wand 
broken  and  his  witchery  'gone — then,  and  then  only,  does 
Scott  attain  his  highest  greatness  and  give  the  world  most 
noble  assurance  of  a  man.  His  diary  as  his  life  dwindles 
away,  that  life  once  so  splendid  and  so  full,  is  like  the 
noblest  poem — its  broken  and  falling  sentences  go  direct 
to  the  heart.  Fuirnus  was  never  written  more  grandly, 
with  more  noble  patience  and  valor.  Without  this  down- 
fall his  triumph  might  have  been  but  as  the  other  triumph 
— the  tragedy  of  the  conclusion  is  a  sight  for  men  and 
angels.  Lockhart,  who  preserves  the  record  for  us,  be- 
comes for  the  time  the  greatest,  with  a  subject  more  mov- 
ing, more  noble,  than  any  that  his  hero  had  selected  from 
the  records  of  the  ages.  The  pity  and  anguish  grow  too 
much  for  the  spectator.  We  are  spectators  no  longer,  but 
mournful  and  devoted  retainers  standing  about,  all  hushed 
and  silent,  scarcely  able  either  to  shed  or  to  restrain  the 
choking  tears. 

One  asks  one's  self,  Is  this  the  cost  of  supreme  human 
power  ?  is  it  to  be  bought  by  nothing  but  the  agony  in 
which  failure,  real  or  apparent,  is  a  part,  and  in  which 
all  the  exquisite  tenement  of  reputation,  happiness,  and 
delightsome  life  seems  to  crumble  down  like  a  house  of 
cards  before  our  eyes  ?  Dread  question  for  the  genius  of 
the  future,  sad  yet  sublime  problem  of  the  past  !  At  all 
events  it  was  so  in  the  life  of  Scott,  which  in  all  its  great- 
ness was  never  so  great,  so  touching,  so  secure  of  love 
and  honor,  as  in  the  moment  when  his  weapons  fell  from 
his  hands  and  his  genius  and  being  alike  failed,  breaking 
down  in  a  last  supreme  struggle  for  justice  and  honor 


490  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

and  fair  dealing,  to  avoid  what  he  thought  disgrace  and 
the  intolerable  stigma  of  having  done  any  man  wrong. 

It  is  a  penalty  of  such  greatness,  especially  in  the 
midst  of  an  enthusiastic  and  unanimous  country,  that  it 
becomes  more  or  less  a  thing  to  trade  upon,  the  subject 
of  vague  patriotic  vaporings,  and  much  froth  of  foolish 
talk  from  uninstructed  lips  in  the  following  generations. 
As  Stratford-on-Avon  is  in  respect  to  Shakspeareall  Scot- 
land is  in  respect  to  Burns  and  Scott.  It  has  even  be- 
come a  mark  of  culture  and  superiority  among  certain 
fine  spirits  in  consequence  to  pretend  to  despise  the 
former  of  these  names  —perhaps  really  to  despise  it,  for 
there  is  no  fathom  that  can  sound  the  depths  of  human 
foolishness  even  in  the  learned  and  wise.  The  vulgarity 
of  fame  when  it  becomes  the  cry  of  the  most  prosaic  is, 
however,  calculated  justly  to  alarm  the  literary  soul,  and 
in  the  excess  of  Scott  monuments,  and  wooden  quaighs, 
and  tartan  paper-knives,  there  is  a  damping  and  depress- 
ing quality  which  we  must  all  acknowledge. 

We  need  not,  however,  in  these  follies  forget  the  illu- 
minating presence  of  Scott  in  the  midst  of  all  the  pic- 
turesque scenes  of  what  he  has  proudly  called  "  mine  own 
romantic  town."  From  the  High  School  Yards  and 
"the  kittle  nine  steps,"  from  George  Square,  lying  cosy 
but  gray  in  the  hollow  amid  the  enlarged  and  beautiful 
openings  of  the  Meadows,  to  the  Parliament  House, 
withdrawn  in  the  square,  once  blocked  by  the  Old  Tol- 
bootli,  now  confronted  solely  by  an  embellished  and  re- 
stored cathedral,  and  to  the  sober  street  on  the  other 
side  of  the  hollow,  where  to  39  North  Castle  Street  he 
took  his  bride  and  set  up  his  independent  home,  there  is 
no  corner  of  Edinburgh  Avhere  his  step  and  voice  have 
not  been.  And  some  of  the  most  characteristic  scenes 
which  we  can  call  to  mind  in  recent  history  rise  before 
us  in  his  narrative  as  if  we  had  been  there.  The  Port- 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND. 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT'S  HOUSE. 


eous  Mob  riots  in  our  ears,  the  flare  of  the  sudden  fire  at 
the  gates  of  the  Tolbooth,  the  blinding  smoke,  the  tramp 


492  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

of  the  crowd,  the  sudden  concentrated  force  of  that 
many-headed  multitude  stilled  by  stern  resolve  into  unity 
and  action,  are  as  visible  as  if  they  had  happened  yester- 
day. And  after  ransacking  all  the  serious  volumes  that 
tell  the  story  and  picture  the  aspect  of  old  Edinburgh, 
we  turn  back  to  that  tale,  and  for  the  first  time  see  (he 
tortuous  passage  between  the  church  and  the  Tolbooth, 
the  dark  old  prison  with  its  lofty  turrets,  the  Lucken- 
booths  linked  on  to  its  dark  shadow,  oppressing  the  now 
wide  thoroughfare  of  the  High  Street,  where  these  build- 
ings have  left  no  trace.  No  topographical  record  or 
painstaking  print  comes  within  a  hundred  miles  of  that 
picture,  dashed  in  boldly  by  the  way,  to  the  entrancing 
tale.  I  cannot  refrain  from  placing  here  one  or  two  vign- 
ettes, which  I  have  no  doubt  the  artist  himself  will 
allow  to  surpass  his  best  efforts,  and  which  set  the  land- 
scape before  us  with  a  distinct  yet  ideal  and  poetical 
grace  which  pencil  and  graver  can  very  seldom  equal. 
The  first  is  of  the  exterior  aspect  oX  Edinburgh. 

"  Marching  in  this  manner  they  speedily  reached  an  eminence, 
from  which  they  could  view  Edinburgh  stretching  along  the 
ridgy  hill  which  slopes  eastward  from  the  Castte.  The  latter, 
being  in  a  state  of  siege,  or  rather  of  blockade,  by  the  northern 
insurgents,  who  had  already  occupied  the  town  for  two  or  three 
days,  fired  at  intervals  upon  such  parties  of  Highlanders  as  exposed 
themselves,  either  on  the  main  street,  or  elsewhere  in  the  vicin- 
ity of  the  fortress.  The  morning  being  calm  and  fair,  the  effect 
of  this  dropping  fii'e  was  to  invest  the  Castle  in  wreaths  of  smoke, 
the  edges  of  which  dissipated  slowly  in  the  air,  while  the  central 
veil  was  darkened  ever  and  anon  by  fresh  clouds  poured  forth 
from  the  battlements  ;  the  whole  giving,  by  the  partial  conceal- 
ment, an  appearance  of  grandeur  and  gloom,  rendered  more 
terrific  when  Waverley  reflected  on  the  cause  by  which  it  was 
produced,  and  that  each  explosion  might  ring  some  brave  man's 
knell." 

The  second  introduces  us  to  the  interior  of  the  city. 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND.  493 

"  Under  the  guidance  of  his  trusty  attendant,  Colonel  Manner- 
ing,  after  threading  a  dark  lane  or  two,  reached  the  High  Street, 
then  clanging  with  the  voices  of  oyster-women  and  the  bells  of 
pie-men,  for  it  had,  as  his  guide  assured  him,  just  '  chappit  eiglit 
upon  the  Tron.'  It  was  long  since  Mannering  had  been  in  the 
street  of  a  crowded  metropolis,  which,  with  its  noise  and  clamor, 
its  sounds  of  trade,  of  revelry  and  of  license,  its  variety  of  lights, 
and  the  eternally  changing  bustle  of  its  hundred  groups,  offers, 
by  night  especially,  a  spectacle  which,  though  composed  of  the 
most  vulgar  materials  when  they  are  separately  considered,  has, 
when  they  are  combined,  a  striking  and  powerful  effect  on  the 
imagination.  The  extraordinary  height  of  the  houses  was  marked 
by  lights,  which,  glimmering  irregularly  along  their  front,  as- 
cended so  high  among  the  attics,  that  they  seemed  at  length  to 
twinkle  in  the  middle  sky.  This  coup  d'ceil,  which  still  subsists 
in  a  certain  degree,  was  then  more  imposing,  owing  to  the  unin- 
terrupted range  of  buildings  on  each  side,  which,  broken  only  at 
the  space  where  the  North  Bridge  joins  the  main  street,  formed 
a  superb  and  uniform  Place,  extending  from  the  front  of  the 
Luckenbooths  to  the  head  of  the  Canongate,  and  corresponding 
in  breadth  and  length  to  the  uncommon  height  of  the  buildings 
on  either  side." 

Since  then  this  great  Place  has  become  more  majestic 
as  well  as  more  open,  by  the  clearing  away  of  the  Luck- 
enbooths :  but  nothing  can  be  finer  than  the  touch  of  the 
graphic  yet  reticent  pencil  which  sets  down  before  us  the 
glimmering  of  the  irregular  lights  which  seemed  at  last 
to  twinkle  in  the  middle  sky.  This  was  how  the  main 
street  of  Edinburgh  still  appeared  when  Scott  himself 
was  a  boy,  and  no  doubt  he  must  have  caught  the  aspect 
of  the  previous  sketch  on  some  king's  birthday  or  other 
public  holiday,  the  4th  of  June  perhaps,  that  familiar 
festival  in  other  regions,  when  the  guns  of  the  Castle 
were  saluting  and  the  smoke  hanging  about  those  heights 
like  a  veil. 

It  was  one  of  the  privations  of  Scott's  life  as  it  began  to 
fall  into  its  last  subdued  and  suffering  stage  that  he  had 
to  give  up  his  Edinburgh  house  and  the  cheerful  company 


494  ROYAL  EDINBURGH. 

which  had  so  long  made  his  winters  pleasant.  He  loved 
the  country  and  his  home  there  at  all  seasons,  as  the 
readers  of  the  poetical  chapters  of  friendly  dedication  and 
communing  addressed  to  different  friends  between  the 
cantos  of  Marmion  will  well  remember  :  but  yet  the  yearly 
change,  the  natural  transfer  of  life  in  the  short  days  to 
the  cheerful  surroundings  of  town,  the  twinkling  of  those 
very  lights,  the  assembling  of  bright  faces,  the  meeting 
of  old  friends,  were  always  dear  to  him,  and  this  sacrifice 
was  not  one  of  the  least  which  he  made  during  the  tre- 
mendous struggle  of  his  waning  years. 

With  no  other  name  could  we  so  fitly  close  the  story  of 
our  ancient  capital,  a  story  fitfully  told  with  many  breaks 
and  omissions,  yet  offering  some  thread  of  connection  to 
link  together  the  different  eras  of  a  picturesque  and  charac- 
teristic national  life.  Had  space  and  knowledge  per- 
mitted, there  is,  in  the  records  of  Scottish  law  alone, 
much  that  is  interesting,  along  with  a  still  larger  contri- 
bution of  wit  and  humor  and  individual  character,  to  the 
elucidation  of  the  period  which  passed  between  the  end 
of  the  history  of  Edinburgh  under  her  native  kings  and 
the  beginning  of  her  brilliant  record  under  the  modern 
reign  of  literature  and  poetry.  This  book,  however,  does 
not  pretend  to  set  forth  the  Edinburgh  of  the  Kirk  or  the 
Parliament  House,  each  of  which  has  an  existing  record 
of  its  own.  Seated  on  the  rocks  which  are  more  old  than 
any  history,  though  those  precipices  are  now  veiled  with 
verdure  and  softness,  and  the  iron  way  of  triumphant 
modern  science  runs  at  their  feet ;  with  her  crown  of 
sacred  architecture  hanging  over  her  among  the  mists, 
and  the  little  primeval  shrine  mounted  upon  her  highest 
ridge  ;  with  her  palace,  all  too  small  for  the  requirements 
of  an  enlarged  and  splendid  royalty,  and  the  great 
crouched  and  dormant  sentinel  of  nature  watching  over 
her  through  all  the  centuries  j  with  her  partner,  sober 


GEORGE  STREET,  EDINBURGH.-Page  494. 

Royal  Edinburgh, 


THE  SHAKSPEARE  OF  SCOTLAND. 


495 


and  ample,  like  a  comely  matron,  attended  by  all  the 
modern  arts  and  comforts,  seated  at  the  old  mother's 
feet, — Edinburgh  can  never  be  less  than  royal,  one  of  the 
crowned  and  queenly  cities  of  the  world.  It  does  not 
need  for  this  distinction  that  there  should  be  millions  of 
inhabitants  within  her  walls,  or  all  the  great  threads  of 
industry  and  wealth  gathered  in  her  hands.  The  pathos 
of  much  that  is  past  and  over  forever,  the  awe  of  many 
tragedies,  a  recollection  almost  more  true  than  any  reality 
of  the  present,  of  ages  and  glories  gone — add  a  charm 
which  the  wealthiest  and  greatest  interests  of  to-day  can- 
not give,  to  the  city,  always  living,  always  stirring,  where 
she  stands  amid  traditionary  smoke  and  mists,  the  gray 
metropolis  of  the  North,  the  Edinburgh  of  a  thousand 
fond  associations, 

Our  Own  Romantic  Town. 


THE  END. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    001  203615    8 


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